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S L I (i II T T O K K X 



WARM REGARD. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGR 

Invitation to a House-Warming, ... 9 

The Sight of a Ghost, 21 

Thanksgiving for a Spring-Day, . . . 35 

A First Look at Strawberries, .... 40 

Simmer Pictures with One's Eyes Shut, . . 47 

Unexpected News of Death, .... 57 

The Business Man's Farm, .... 68 

A Chapter of Paragraphs, 74 

A Handful of Autumn Leaves, . . . 85 

A Newspaper's Monologue on its Birthday, . 9f> 

In Winter Quarters, 107 

Going to Bed in a Cold Room, . . . .114 

Idyl of a Winter's Morning, . . . . 126 

New-Year Addresses 135 



How the Bishop built his College in the Woods. 153 

(iii) 



PREFACE. 




HERE seems little need of preface to this 
volume ; I desire to intimate by its title 
my sense of the slightnesss as well as the 
desultory nature of its contents; — these are, in- 
deed, such things as one begins and often ends 
in pencil marks on the fly-leaves of favorite books. 
(Doubtless here, in more than one instance, the 
particular favorite book has hinted itself in its fly- 
leaf suggestion.) I wish I might confidently say 
of these brief essays, as Thackeray is reported — by 
the editor of his "Early and Late Papers" — to 
have remarked regarding some uncollected pieces 
of bis own: "They are small potatoes — but 
pretty good small potatoes, I believe.*' Rather 
I may say, of a part of them at least — keeping 
the vegetable allusion in sight : Good people 

(vii) 



viii PSEF 

of the market, pray remember, if small, they are 
early ones. The final and much tho longest 
paper, " How the Bishop built his College in the 
Woods," was not intended to fall under the gen- 
eral title of the volume; it aims to sketch one 
of the most interesting episodes in the history 
of education in America. 



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INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMING. 




E have just finished our new house; 
we expect to move into it to-mor- 
row, and shall be at home to our 
friends on next Thursday evening. Per- 
haps some of those most curious would 
know at once what manner of house we 
have built; — we shall only in part gratify 
their curiosity by saying that it is a house 
built with hands — all of whom, we believe, 
have been fairly well paid ; it is made of 
brick and wood and mortar. It was not built 
for eternity, let us confess, but for humble 
temporal uses. In planning it we did not re- 
call unheeding those honest words of the 
Roman poet to some wealthy neighbor : " You 

(9) 



Id INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMING. 

put out marble to hew, though with one foot 
in the grave, and, forgetful of a tomb, are 
building houses;"* nor did we fail to re- 
member the same poet's not less pertinent 
words, questioning the wisdom — since no ma- 
terial splendor or luxury may quiet a troubled 
mind — of raising an edifice whose architecture 
should excite envy, and in the modern taste. ! 
(It would seem that modern taste has existed 
for a long time.) Whether we have ransacked 
the multitudinous books on house furnishing 
and household decoration need not, therefore, 
remain an open question. Indeed, we knew 
at its foundation that ours would not be the 
House Beautiful, unless the Being Beautiful 

*"Tu secanda marmora 

Locas sub ipsum funus; et, sepulcri 
Immemor, stiiiis demos." 

—Horace, Book IT., Ode XVIII. 
■(•••Quod si dolentem nee Phrygius lapis, 
Nee purpurarum sidere clarior 
Delenit usus, lire Palerna 
Vitia, Achsemeniumve costum; 
Cur invidendia posticus et novo 
Sublime ritu moliar atrium?" 

— Hokace, Booh III, Ode I. 



INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMING. \\ 

should so elect by consenting to dwell in it. 
And it is hardly necessary to suggest the 
dimensions of our new house (there is suffi- 
cient room in it for our friends, we trust). 
We should gladly have carved over its door- 
way, as was over that of Ariosto, " Parva, sed 
apta mihi " (Small, but fit for me), did it seem 
quite modest to publish one's modesty. 

Let us repeat: — we shall move into our 
new house to-morrow. But do any of our 
friends appreciate the difficulties of moving 
into a new house ? Do they know how hard 
it is to get ourselves fairly into a new house? 
To the inconsiderate, indeed, this may not 
seem a serious matter, and, of course, if yon, 
dear sir or madam, be happily or unhappily 
the image of God cut in rosewood or ma- 
hogany (and so might properly come under 
the head of furniture), one house, old or new, 
will fit you as well as another — you require 
room somewhere else, and the transfer car 
does the business at once; you are moved, you 
do not move. Or if you are the atmospheric 
mechanism of some lucky discoverer of per- 



]o INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMING. 

petual motion (a sort of Yankee Prometheus 
perhaps), why, then you simply keep going — 

you never stay — content. Home to you is 
any place, whether or not the heart be there. 
You take your household — goods and chattels 
— -with you. Your sails are set, your cable is 
cut, and no woven sea-sunk trail of electric 
wire follows you all your way, 

"And drags, at each remove, a lengthening chain." 

But if you be a living soul; if, as you have 
passed from day to day, from year to year, the 
invisible anus of your human sympathies have 
been clasping their quick tendrils lovingly about 
inanimate things until these have become a part 
of your being, you must, before getting into a 
new house, get out of an old one. This will 
take some time — for those invisible arms are 
not to be disengaged lightly; those tendrils 
will not loose their hold without drawing 
heart's blood. Fated to be exiles, these strag- 
glers arc strongly disposed to linger about the 
ruins of Troy, and have little faith in unknown 
Lavinian shores. Thcv do not wish to make 



IXVITATIOX TO A HOUSE-WABMIXG. 13 

voyages into Italy with ./Eneas. ^Eneas, how- 
ever, will go, and Father Anchises, and the 
boy Ascanius, with the household gods per- 
force in their company ; — but the mother Creiisa 
remains behind. We are all, how often, like 
that Trojan family, whose record was so fondly 
traced by Virgil, when we move from old 
houses into new ones; we go with many back- 
ward footsteps. Some sweet wife, some tender 
mother, Creiisa, remains behind, and depart- 
ing we behold only her elusive spirit. 

" Farewell, and love the son we loved together ence, 
we twain," * 

are her last tender words, recalling all the old 
affection ; and then it happens to us as ./Eneas 
relates of himself: 

"She left me when these words were given, me weep- 
ing sore, and fain 

To tell her much, and forth away amid thin air she 
passed ; 

And there three times about her neck I strove mine 
arms to cast, 

*"Jamque vale, et nati serva communis amorem." 



14 INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMING. 

And thrice away from out my hands the gathered 

image streams 
E'en as the breathing of the wind or winged tiling of 

dreams." * 

— Yes, so we commune -with and strive to pos- 
sess again and embrace, ere we go away, the 
spirit of the old house. 

To-morrow we shall move into our new 
house. But the truth is, it is impossible to 
move wholly from an old house. To-morrow 
we shall begiu to move out of our old house, 
and to-morrow we shall begin to move into 
our new one. 

Our old houses — all old houses — deserted 
by their long-familiar tenants, are somewhat 
like old men whoso children are dead. A sug- 
gestion of forlorn humanity looks through 
their vacant windows, clings to their niolder- 
ing caves. It is no marvel that vulgar super- 

*" Hsec ubi dicta dodit, lacriinantem et multa volen- 
tem 
Dicere deseruit, tenuesque recessit in auras. 
Ter conatue ibi collo dare brachia circum ; 
Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, 
Par I' \ ibua ventis rblucrique similma Bomno." 
— Virgil's -Exkiii, Book II. ; translation by W. Morris. 



INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMING. 15 

stition so often makes old houses haunted. 
There is one great pensive ghost always 
present in each; their halls echo forever the 
footsteps of the Past. In them have infants 
lisped their first language up into happy mo- 
thers' eyes and learned their first prayers. 
Children's footsteps have beaten like pulses of 
fresh new hearts in every room — on every 
stair — and grown old and slow and heavy, 
with those same hearts above them also grow- 
ing old and slow and heavy. There brides 
have entered and breathed their smiling breath 
away, and gone out with household lamenta- 
tions, ignorant tears of children (smiling again 
how soon !) and the silence of the strong man's 
sorrow. Old clocks have haunted the apart- 
ments — making audible the pulse of Time, 
fast or slow, answering, heard or unheard, the 
heart-pulses of watchers and dreamers in those 
rooms — through long, long years. How the 
sweet lightnings of the fireside have breathed 
about glad household faces their happy even- 
ing halo! Friends have come and met the 
threshold smile of welcome, and, departing, 



16 INVITATION TO A H0U8E-WABMING. 

left their blessing at the door. All these asso- 
ciations quicken the atmosphere and people 
the emptiness of old houses. A living soul has 
been breathed into them; our living soul has 
been breathed into those which we have made 
our homes. To leave the old house we must 
leave something, indeed much, of ourselves. 
We think we are free, but some better part of 
us we leave behind. The body is withdrawn ; 
our souls remain behind, and are in the pre- 
sumably vacant chamber's prison in spite of 
us — lovingly in spite of us. 

Yes, and in spite of the mortgage on the 

old family hearth — through which now, as in 
the days of Horace,* wife and husband are 
turned out, bearing in their arms their house- 
hold gods and their destitute children — we 
have possession still. " Possession is nine 
points of the law," says the proverb, and, at 
any rate, the law can not dispossess us. AVe 

* " Pellitur paternos 

In sinu ferene deoa 

la uxor ct vir Bordidosque di 

IIohack, Book IL, Ode X VIII. 



INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMXG. 17 

have the incontestable possession of — a dream! 
Very pleasantly we sit and chat there in the 
old days, around the blazing, crackling, sing- 
ing flame; we speak of things that sound 
most pleasant about a family fireside; talk 
merrily, laugh joyously, and — wake up some 
forty years older in our new honse ! 

There, we fondly remember, was Mary's 
gentle face, just as she looked — clear God! 
how easily dreams make us tenderly happy, 
and our wakings leave us their delicious 
sadness! — just as she looked when the sweet 
little girl was singing over her knitting (the 
old house was a country farm-house, and our 
first piano had not then been brought across 
the Allegheny Mountains). George is passing 
toward the fifties now — you will perhaps rind 
his latest Congressional speech in your morn- 
ing paper; then he was just filling out the 
first sunny lustrum of boyhood. And we — 
alas! it would take clearer spectacles than you 
or we wear to transform us into the sprightly 
lad of twelve who was cracking walnuts in 
the chimney-corner. And they who sat so 



]8 INVITATION TO A WOUSE-W ARMING. 

quietly with tlicir loving years buried calmly, 
like Bleeping children, in their bosoms — they 
had their last seasons for Time to drift his 
snows about their temples sufficiently, and for 
"Winter to heap snow upon their graves, 
twenty years ago. Yes, it was but a dream, 
but the old house out of which we began to 
move forty years ago gave up its dead — they 
became once more the living; the home fire- 
light there, whose last coals crumbled into 
ashes when we came away, leaped and danced 
and sang, and the dead Past, like the kiss- 
awakened fairy sleeper, thrilled with the warm 
pulses of a quick and happy Present. This 
experience, which we have now only feigned — 
but it is often the true experience of many 
hearts — will serve to show how we can not gel 
wholly out of an old house, and wholly into 
a new one. 

We may doubt whether in Heaven we shall 
always feel ourselves entirely there. Shall we 
not fall dreaming and be old men, now and 
then, in some of these old-and-new hous< 
our.-? Sometimes, in placid reveiy, by the 



INVITATION TO A HOUSE-WARMING. 19 

celestial waters, will not the doors of our old 
earthly houses re-open to receive us? Will 
there not be goings and comings, and will not 
the "House not built with hands" be at times 
willingly deserted for some bumble dwelling 
around which the sweet human roses clam- 
bered? Or shall we then have finally and 
forever moved into that New House? 

Our new house, we have said, is finished: 
it is ready for us to enter and occupy it. We 
arc about to open its doors, and begin to call 
it home. We shall have the first ownership 
of its threshold. No gentle household foot- 
step has been upon»any floor or stairway to 
hallow them. ]STo dreamers have awakened 
in any of its rooms, with an angel standing in 
the moonlight, "writing in a book of gold." 
We shall have to people the chambers first 
with our own dream-children — no otbers have 
been begotten there. "It might have been," 
and " it still may be," — Regret and Hope — 
must open lonely graves, or picture winged 
messengers descending the rainbow to our bid- 
ding, there. And we must invite our friends 



20 INVITATION TO .1 HOUSE-WARMING. 

that live in memory only, as well as those 
that meet and greet us day by day, to come 
from the Past with old familiar looks, and help 
us take possession of the new places — let 
them take still possession with us. There, as 
in our olden chambers, rise from the grave- 
yards of the heart, revisit our dreams. No 
lock shall keep their silent feet away. But 
you that "draw the vital air," come and take 
your warm seats there; if not with visible 
faces, come in thought and Ave shall feel your 
presence. But rather come with hearty 
knocks (we do not care for spirit-rapping 
visitors), to echo and re-echo through our new 
halls. Make our house your very own. "VVe 
build no houses for ourselves only — we could 
not build such. Let your dreams he some- 
times on the pillow in our new house, even 
though you shall awaken far oil"; and let your 
remembrance join our morning meetings. 

After our own entrance into the new house, 
who can tell whether a cradle shall enter its 
doors first after us,or a coffin? 



TBE STGI1T OF A GHOST. 




HE late English poet, Sidney Dobell, 
somewhere naively says: 

"Doubtless there are no ghosts; 

Yet somehow it is better not to move, 

Lest cold hands seize upon us from the dark;" 

and, in his " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 
Dr. Holmes shows a happy recognition of what 
maybe called the ghost-sense, that mysterious 
apprehension (some of the brute kind appear to 
share it with us) which is born and lives — and 
is doubtless never thoroughly dead — in us all, 
where he alludes to a man lying in the dark, 
alone, whose " wholcbody seems but one great 
nerve of hearing," and who " sees the phos- 
phorescent flashes of his own eye-balls as 

(21) 



THE SIGHT OF A GIInsT. 



they turn suddenly in the direction of the Last 
strange noise." There are few persons, per- 
haps, who have not experienced, and do not 
experience (even now, when science seems de- 
termined to exorcise, if possible, both spirit 
and spirits) these superstitious feelings, at least 
occasionally. They are plants that find their 
old, obscurely clinging roots deep down in 
the mystery of our being, and have not their 
strange seeds sown by education, although 
they may themselves be educated. Charles 
Lamb, in his essay on " Witches and Other 
Night Fears," gives an example of a child — 
understood to be Thornton, the son of Leigh 
Hunt — who was carefully kept from any con- 
tact with the whispering of legends and sto- 
ries tending to excite superstitious fears — 
guarded jealously against the sight of ghosts 
by keeping from him all suggestions of such 
things; yet his own mind created, his own 
imagination realized them, " and from his little 
midnight pillow," writes Lamb, "this nurse 
child of optimism will start at shapes unbor- 
rowed of tradition, in sweats to which the 



THE SIGHT OF A GHOST. 23 

reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tran- 
quility." Introducing this personal illustra- 
tion, the essayist says: "It is not book or 
picture, or the stories of foolish servants which 
create these terrors in children. They can, at 
most, but give them a direction." And, fur- 
ther on, he says: " Gorgons, and hydras, and 
chimeras — dire stories of Celaeno and the har- 
pies — may reproduce themselves in the brain 
of superstition ; but they were there before. 
They are transcripts, types — the archetypes 
are in us and eternal. How else should the 
recital of that which we know in a waking 
sense to be false come to affect us at all ? — or 

" ' Names, whose sense we see not, 
Fray us with things that be not ?' 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from 
such objects, considered in their capacity of 
being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? 
Oh, least of all ! These terrors are of older 
standing. They date beyond body — or, with- 
out the body, they would have been the same. 
All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in 



'24 THE SIGHT OF A GHOST. 

Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, 
scorching demons — are they one-half so tear- 
ful to the spirit of a man as the simple idea of 
a spirit, unembodied, following him, — 

" ' Like one that on a lonesome road, 

Doth walk in fear ami dread, 
Ami, having once turned round, walks on, 

And turns no more his head, 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 

Doth close behind him tread?' 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely 
spiritual ; that it is strong in proportion as it is 
objectless upon earth ; that it predominates in 
the period of sinless infancy, are difficulties, 
the solution of which might afford some prob- 
able insight into our ante-mundane condition, 
and a peep, at least, into the shadow-land of 
pre-existence." But to return to the ghost it- 
Belf: — Dr. Samuel Johnson has observed some- 
where, that one of the best reasons for be- 
lieving that spirits sometimes make themselves 
visible to men, is that, always and every-where, 
among the most enlightened as well as the 
most ignorant nations, supernatural appari- 



THE SIGHT OF A GHOST. 25 

tions have been chronicled, associated often 
with important events in the history of indi- 
viduals and peoples. To Miss Anna Seward, 
who smiled incredulously at his serious inter- 
est in a ghost reported to and believed in by 
John Wesley, he said : " This is a question 
which, after five thousand years, is yet unde- 
cided; a question, whether in theology or phi- 
losophy, one of the most important that can 
come before the human understanding." And, 
at another time, he said: "A total disbelief 
of them is adverse to the opinion of the exist- 
ence of the soul between death and the last 
day. The question simply is, whether departed 
spirits ever have the power of making them- 
selves perceptible to us." Dr. Johnson was 
satirized by Churchill as a believer in the story 
of a ghost in Cock Lane, which, in the year 
1762, had gained very general credit in Lon- 
don; but Boswell affirms that, because the 
story had become so popular he had only 
thought it should be investigated, and was, in 
fact, one of those, the Bishop of Salisbury be- 
ing another, by whom the ghost in question 



26 THE SIGHT OF A GHOST 

was proved to be an imposture, himself writing 
an account of it, published in the Gentleman's 
Magazine. In this connection, we remember 
that some years ago, in one of our largest 
Western cities (Louisville), a ghost was said to 
be seen at " about the stroke of twelve," walk- 
ing between two certain points in the outskirts 
of the place. This may have been, like the 
ghost in Cock Lane, a fictitious ghost. But 
did the hundreds of people who nightly went 
to visit the locality go entirely incredulous of 
its reality? Were they not disappointed be- 
cause the ghost was too timid to "walk" in 
the moonlight stare of several hundred spec- 
tators, on tiptoe with tremulous curiosity? 
"We (one of the spectators) gave the ghost 
credit for this natural, if not supernatural, 
feeling; and were we not also disappointed? 
The influence of a belief in ghosts is occa- 
sionally somewhat illustrated now-a-days — 
the influence illustrated, and the belief at- 
tested — by the depreciation of real estate, by 
the giving of a ghostly or spiritual valuation 
to real estate, upon which the mortgage of a 



THE SIGIIT OF A GHOST. 27 

ghost, so to speak, has been foreclosed. Men 
may live, and grow old, and die, for years and 
years, in a Christian and natural manner, in 
their dwelling-houses — bridals may come and 
funerals go — and the house retains its charac- 
ter as an abode for undisturbed tranquility ; 
for children's blossoming fancies by the fire- 
side, and second childhood's blossoming faith. 
But so soon as in a house some deed is done 
which sets apart a chamber for Bluebeard's 
key, the curse is come — the silence begins to 
brood — the place is haunted. If, perchance, 
reasoning ghost-destroyers dare to make its 
hearth home, gradually the sounds that every 
old house treasures up — the vague, out-of-the- 
world whisperings through the chinks that 
Time has made — are, little by little, inter- 
preted by the suggested and growing ghost- 
sense into the English or French or German 
of their every-day vernacular. The ghost- 
exorcisers, the ghost-destroyers, at length con- 
cede that they "dislike the place" — that "it 
does not suit them in some respects " — and 
forfeit the time their lease has yet to run (and 



28 THE SIGHT OF A GHOST. 

how willing arc ghost-owners — that is, owners 
of haunted real estate — to give long lea 
The fact is, they have seen the ghost ! And peo- 
ple are wise enough to know why they quit. 
The ghost is fully installed master of the sit- 
uation ; the place is shunned — the house is 
haunted. And the little boys cast stones at 
those common daylights of the weird darkness 
within — the windows ; the casements are ready 
for midnight visits of shrieking winds and 
gusts of rain, and fearful glares of lightning — 
music and light of which ghosts are fond; 
and, slowly but surely, the " old, forgotten 
mansion'' becomes a ghost itself. 

But the quotation with which we began this 
paper, made us recur to an experience of our 
own boyhood, which at the time, and long 
afterwards, impressed us deeply. Our family 
lived in a house which was in the first pe- 
riod of its haunted era. It had been built by 
a man concerning whom there were bad, vague 
old stories afloat (he always seemed to us, in 
days, a very good sort of a bad man, 
nevertheless) It was one of three houses, 



THE SIGHT OF A GHOST. 29 

each less than a hundred rods from its fel- 
lows — the other two having a simply terrible 
ghostly reputation. Near one of these was a 

deep, old well, in which out of which we do 

not remember ever to have drunk any water ! 
And when this old house was tenantless — as it 
sometimes remained for many months — we 
never cared to venture near it unless with a 
noisy company of braver boys than we. The 
third house was an old tavern stand — this it 
had been since the early pioneer days of Ohio. 
It stood near one of the great ancient highways 

of the State — the S y Pike — overlooking 

a deep, wide hollow, as did its two more or 
less ghostly neighbors. Ah ! — there were ugly 
stories told about certain rooms in that old 
tavern ! There is a vague chill just now 
creeping up between our shoulders as we re- 
call the accounts reported to have been given 
by travelers of their experience in those rooms. 
But let us get back to our own only partially 
haunted house across the hollow, in which we 
saw the ghost. 

We were — we mean he was — a boy of ten, 



30 THE SIGHT OF A QHOST. 

or about that age. He had read somewhat of 
Shakspeare; Macbeth's witches never appeared 

to more ghostly effect, on any stage, than on 
some dreary heath of his imagination. He 
had been, with Macbeth, clutching at the 
" air-draw dagger." He had shared the guilt 
of being accessory — particeps criminis — with 
the Thane and Lady Macbeth ; he knew all 
about those bloody hands, and had a terri- 
bly wide-awake sense of discovery, when that 
dreadfully-humorous knocking was heard. He 
had been, with Macbeth, at the banquet, and 
he, too, saw Bancjuo in the chair; he had 
seen the eight princes, to be kings hereafter, 
pass across the stage. He had lain awake, 
with Richard in his tent, that morning on Bos- 
worth Field, with Brutus that night before 
Philippi. He had read certain sea-stories 
and old romances, and had heard many read, 
about a listening hearth, "in the long, long 
winter nights of old." He had the ghost- 
sense cultivated, therefore, to some extent. 
And about this time he saw his (and our) first 
ghost. 



THE SIGUT OF A GHOST. 31 

You have our pardon, reader, for looking at 
us so wisely, believing that we believe it to 
have been a ghost, even now. No matter. It 
was a ghost then. 

He awoke very early (he never knew cer- 
tainly what time it may have been, but it was, 
presumably, after midnight), one still, snow- 
lighted winter morning. How warm is a little 
boy, growing larger, when, his mother having 
tucked him softly in at night, he sleeps so well 
that the covers retain the pressure of her 
careful hands ! How warm he was ! And — 
how cold he grew! How cold! — though his 
eyes, with the sense of the ghost standing 
over the opposite bed in those eyes, were un- 
der the blanket ! "White and certain — a draped 
figure; tall and — there! Ah, he never looked 
again to see if It were there. We beg the 
reader (if he be a reasonable creature, that is), 
when he sees a ghost, to look again — to see if 
he sees it. The ghost-sense is different from 
second sight. The ghost-sense (we admit this 
for the sake of our rational reputation) is gen- 
erally first sight. One look may make a 



32 THE SIGHT OF A GIIOST. 

ghost to our ghost-sense — another, exorcise it 
forever. The little hoy did not look a second 
time, and the ghost remained standing. 

Yes, that ghost, we felt assured, many a 
time (and a long time) afterward, -was there. 
The room was large — had two windows look- 
ing eastward, and two, with chimney -jamhs 
and fireplace between, looking southward. 
The only other window, a western one, was at 
the foot of the little hoy's hud ; he slept with a 
younger hoy, a cousin, in the northwest cor- 
ner. In the southeast corner, between an 
eastern and a southern window, was another 
bed, in which slept a young man, employed 
for some forgotten purpose on our place. It 
was over this young fellow's pillow that the 
ghost was visible. 

It was the full development of the little 
boy's ghost-sense. Why did he keep the im- 
pression of this ghost then (we shall not ask 
why do we keep it now) with peculiar tenac- 
ity ? Ah, that same morning one of the 
alien young man's uld relations — a grand- 



THE SIGHT OF A GHOST. 33 

father, we believe — was dying in the same 
neighborhood. This fact, to the little boy, 
associated itself, not unreasonably, with the 
ghost ever afterward. Somebody came, an 
hour or two later, to call the young man 
home; but although his call, from the snowy 
road below the southern windows, gave the 
ghost-seer courage to look beyond his breast- 
work of blankets across the dawn-lighted, 
ghost-empty room, it could not banish the 
ghost that had been there. 

Have we ever exorcised that ghost com- 
pletely? Oh, the little boy reasoned it away, 
as we have completely reasoned away many 
ghosts which other little boys have had the 
sight of. He began to reason it away at once; 
he threw what early light of natural and (Aber- 
crombie's) intellectual philosophy he possessed 
upon it. "We remember that, lying in the 
same room some time afterward, and waking 
in the weird-lit darkness of early dawn, he 
remarked an effect of the outer light on the 
corner of the white chimney-jamb between 



34 THE SIGHT OF A QHOST. 

the windows at the soutli end of the room. 
This vaguely recalled the terribly white, dis- 
tinctly outlined Nothing (of course a ghost is 
nothing) in question. The ghost, however, 
was unquestionable : not a figment of the 
dawn, a mere Solar Myth. 



-5^>^3br4 



THANKSGIVING FOR A SPRING-DAY. 



■ * - s ^Ffr-^*- 



*1?// P« MODERN writer has happily sug- 
r^-V^i gested the eagerness of expectation 
with which all men and women would 



go forth from their houses if the sight of the 
starry heavens, instead of being on free ex- 
hibition at the close of each day, were adver- 
tised as the single fortunate revelation of a 
lifetime. And this same remark might be re- 
peated of any other among the great mani- 
festations of Nature to which our senses have 
become so accustomed as to let it pass into 
what we call the common-place. 

" The sunshine is a glorious birth." 



indeed, but, then, it happens every morning. 

(35) 



36 THANKSGIVING FOR A SPRING DAT. 

Men have always marked, with more or less awe 
ami wonder, eclipses of the sun and moon, or 
the occupations of the planets, or the multitu- 
dinous flights of meteors — they being, or at 
least seeming, exceptional phenomena; but 
these have never been more worthy of admira- 
tion than the myriad daily workings of the 
universe, the countless visible effects of natural 
laws, which demonstrate forever and as fully 
divine ordering and power. 

Doubtless we all feel, more or less, a grate- 
ful sense of the infinite freshness and glad- 
ness at the assured coming of the New Year — 
not as we meet him conventionally at the begin- 
ing of January, in the almanac, wrapped in 
blankets and furs and shawls, but in the 
warmth and brightness and glory of Spring, 
garmented with leaves and garlanded with 
blossoms. But how few of us think to realize 
the boundlessuess and majesty of the miracle 
wrought, by day and by night, before our 
eyes, from the firs! shooting of the sap and 
swelling of the bud, from the first greening 
of the tender grass, from the firsl del irate breath- 



THANKSGIVING FOR A SPRING DAY. 37 

ing of the violet, to the measureless profusion of 
leaves, the luxury of meadows and pastures 
deep with verdure, the flying lovely colors 
and delightful odors of middle May or June. 
It is one vast procession of miracles, one con- 
tinuous resurrection of the dead, one ceaseless 
marvel of creation. 

"We are now in the midst of this period of 
beauty and wonder. How fitting is it that we 
should not let it pass without its due recogni- 
tion and influence in our hearts and in our 
spirits. Every road that leads from the city 
streets takes us into the sensible presence of 
this marvelous working — it is a presence we 
can not escape, that can not escape us. If we 
be blind, it will come to us in the hum of 
insects, the songs of birds; if we be deaf, it 
will be breathed to us in traveling odors; if 
we have no sense of smell, it will touch us 
with delicate fingers of air, with the moist 
pressure of newly plowed earth and dewy 
grasses; if we be dead indeed, it will enfold 
us with the moving warmth of myriad new 



38 THANKSGIVING FOR A SPRING DAY. 

lives — it will turn our dust itself into new and 
beautiful life. 

Meanwhile, if we be not blind, nor deaf, nor 
have lost our power to smell and feel, let us 
"go forth into the open air," and, while we 
"list to Nature's teachings," let them be the 
teachings of life rather than of death — for 
now, if ever, is the season to recognize the 
truth of that sweeter thanatopsis of another 
poet, who says : 

" There is no death — what seems so is transition." 

And for to-morrow (for this is written on 
Saturday) — to-morrow, a Sabbath in the high 
tide of Spring — we know of no more becom- 
ing thanksgiving, for men and women city- 
pent, than for the divine gift of the senses, 
whose true and tender enjoyment in the open 
air — in the woods and fields — will be its proper 
celebration. If our thanksgiving for a Spring- 
Day be offered but to the sun, upon which we 
may look — behind which there must be a far 
greater Brightness, upon which we may not 
look, save in that dazzling eclipse and through 



THANKSGIVING FOR A SPRING DAY. 39 

these smoked glasses of ours — even then it 
shall not seem a foolish thanksgiving. Think 
of the sun himself — the great, eternal, material 
Recreator, under whom, though Solomon deny, 
all thing's are forever new ! 



A FIRST LOOK AT STRAWBERRIES. 




HE sis;ht f strawberries in the mar- 
ket is one of the most delightful sug- 
gestions of the fullness and perfec- 
tion of Spring, and the taste of them is our 
most delicious and complete realization. Of 
the early vernal days it may be said, " by their 
fruits ye shall know them," and if the -weather 
lias not been obedient to our wishes, yet these 
exquisite scarlet offspring of the warmer hours 
of May are enough to make us forget much 
of her April waywardness. 

Who is there that loves not the straw- 
berry? Dispute about tastes is forbidden by 
the Latin proverb, but there are a few things 
on which we may insist. A man must love 
(40) 



A FIRST LOOK AT STRAWBERRIES. 41 

music, in some degree, to be a worthy member 
of the human family. A man must love woman 
to be — a man. Martin Luther sang lustily : 

" Who loves not woman, wine, and song, 
He is a fool his whole life long;" 

and he might safely, if he was a wise man 
himself, have included the strawberry, had his 
rhyme permitted. He who does not confess a 
first love and lasting affection for the straw- 
berry is, surely, the equal of " the man who 
has no music in his soul," in the capabilities of 
depraved sense and spirit. 

We have ourselves a feeling of tenderness, 
mingled with our sense of the beautiful and 
our hardly less delicate sense of taste, when 
we approach the strawberry. Of all the fruits 
of the earth in their season there is hardly 
another that may be compared with it in hum- 
ble origin, secluded growth, and high position 
in polite society. Let us, forgetting a little 
while the delicious heap before us, in their 
slight frost of sugar and tender bath of cream, 
visit the strawberry plot in our garden (or our 



42 -1 FIRST LOOK AT STRAWBERRIES. 

neighbor's — it matters not). How helplessly 
the ripened cones, full of a charming luxury, lie 
waiting under the green coverlet of their vine- 
haves, just touching yet not soiled by the rich 
earth on which, with a light heaviness, they re- 
cline! (It needs a no less delicate-thoughted 
poet than Keats to make a gentle human com- 
parison here.) Or, if growing wild in the low 
meadow-lands, how they sleep in their own 
fragrant atmosphere, dewy-wet, among the 
screening grasses, in their lovely nakedness ! 
Is it not natural that we should think to liken 
this fruit to the violet, which has similar near- 
ness of education to the great mother's bosom, 
and a subtile delicacy of scent, as the strawberry 
has <>f scent and taste, matched with a kindred 
dewy shyness ami nun-like seclusion? We re- 
call Wordsworth's pretty and pathetic verses: 

" A violet by a mossy stone, 
Ealf-hidden from the eye," 

and have a fancy that their tender suggestion 
will be as true if we allow the strawberry to 



A FIRST LOOK AT STRAWBERRIES. 43 

take (it will not usurp) the place of the violet 
in the poetry. 

" Strawberries," wrote Leigh Hunt, " de- 
serve all the good things that may be said of 
them. They are beautiful to look at, delicious 
to eat, have a fine odor, and are so wholesome 
that they are said to agree with the weakest 
digestions, and to be excellent against gout, 
fever, and all sorts of ailments. It is recorded 
of Fontanelle, that he attributed his longevity 
to them, in consequence of their having regu- 
larly cooled a fever which he had every spring; 
and that he used to say : ' If I can but reach 
the season of strawberries !' Boerhave (Phil- 
lips tells us in his 'History of Fruits') looked 
upon their continued use as one of the princi- 
pal remedies in cases of obstruction and vis- 
cidity, and in putrid disorders; Hoffman fur- 
nishes instances of obstinate disorders cured by 
them, even consumptions ; and Linnaeus says 
that, by eating plentifully of them, he kept 
himself free from the gout. They are good 
even for the teeth." 

But it is as simply " a thing of beauty " and 



44 A FIRST LOOK AT STRAWBERRIES. 

" a joy forever," that we prefer now to think 
of the strawberry. 

The writer quoted above tells us of an 
Italian poet who wrote a poem of several hun- 
dred lines upon strawberries. lie says: "The 
poet of the strawberries was a Jesuit, a very 
honest man, too, notwithstanding the odium 
of his order's name; and a grave, eloquent, 
and truly Christian theologian, of ajife re- 
corded as ' evangelical.' It is delightful to see 
what playfulness such a man thought not in- 
consistent with the most sacred aspirations. 
The strawberry, to him, had its merits in the 
creation, as well as the star; and he knew how 
to give each its due. Nay, he runs the joke 
down, like a humorist who could no nothing 
else but joke if he pleased, but gracefully 
withal, and with a sense of nature above his 
art, like a true lover of poetry." The poem 
happily closes with an apostrophe to a newly- 
married couple, friends of the poet, of cele- 
brated Venetian families, and has this good 
wish and blessing at the end: 



A FIRST LOOK AT STRAWBERRIES. 45 

"Around this loving pair may joy serene, 
On wings of balm, forever wind and play ; 
And laughing Health her roses shake between, 
Making their life one long, sweet, flowery way ! 
May bliss, true bliss, pure, self-possessed of mien, 
Be absent from their side, no, not a day ! 
In short, to sum up all that earth can prize, 
May they have sugar to their strawberries." 

The strawberry season is the happiest season 
of the honeymoon, and it is not improper for 
the intoxicating thought of the two to he joined 
together in blissful union. But the Italian 
poet should have added cream to the sugar, 
above. Of the cream without the strawberry, 
Herrick sings : 

" You see how cream but naked is, 
Nor dances to the eye 
Without the strawberry," 

And without the cream the strawberry, how- 
ever it may dance to the eye, does not come so 
kiss-worthy to the lips. The man who loves 
not strawberries in his mouth, 

And is not moved with concord of sweet cream, 

is — but we have some faith in human nature, 



16 



.1 FIRST LOOK AT STRAWBERRIES. 



and do not think such a man possible. We 
admireingly see the strawberry disappear grad- 
ually in the rich cream — becoming only visi- 
ble by a rosy suggestion, and then arising 
like Aphrodite from her sea-cradle. 




SUMMER PICTURES WITH ONES EYES SHUT. 




E have been a day in the country. 
Will you not recognize the sun's 
mark in the increased warmth of our 
own countenance? The word "white"* is 
just for the present stricken from our consti- 
tution ; we belong to some noble order of Red 
Men, — we are distinctly and happily sun- 
burnt. 

Where was our little midsummer holiday, 
do you ask us? It was not at a fashionable 
watering-place, we assure you ; — neither was it 
at any seaside resort, nor at any advertisable 

* Written at the time when the striking-out of the 
word " white " from the Constitution of Ohio was under 
consideration. 

(47) 



48 SUMMER PICTURES 11777/ ONE'S EYES SHUT. 

" springs." The Saturday night's train took 
us, and at sunrise of the Sabbath morning we 
saw the happy light through the windows of a 
country tavern ; then in a few minutes we were 
walking buoyantly among orchards, between 
broad meadows, in sight of tlie full loveliness 
of Summer — in hearing of her best morning 
music. 

Whither? Let a poet answer. He says : 

'• I know a cottage where the woodbine grows," etc. 

These dreamy people are always finding Par- 
adise in some modern disguise, unsuspected 
by the evolution-raised Adam, proprietor of 
the real estate and personal property thereof. 
This good Adam pays the taxes, and finds 
that the garden costs more than its apples 
and less dangerous fruits come to at market, 
perhaps. 

Now let us shut our eyes, this hot July 
morning, and be in the country again. What 
shall we see? 

First, we sec a low, level field full of rat- 
tle scattered in the early sunrise, one here, 



SUMMER PICTURES WITH OXE'S EYES SHUT. 49 

one there — some chewing the quiet cud, some 
grazing with their dewy backs toward the sun 
and glistening; some radiant, with uplifted 
horns, a light mist creeping about their feet 
and half enveloping a few of those farthest 
away. 

An open woodland grows before us, show- 
ing closets and caverns of green gloom, with 
a brook in the foreground, making as much as 
it can of the Sabbath morning quiet, laughing 
and splashing along, and talking in its under- 
tone, doubtless of the transient hour-passenger 
who looks so wistfully and perhaps enviously 
at its gay eternity. Among the tree-boles 
behind drifts 

"A flock of sheep that leisurely pass hy," 

having just been set free from their night's fold 
by their good shepherd, who is standing yon- 
der at the open fence, watching affectionately 
a young lamb which manifests delight — bear 
witness his twinkling tail — in the transub- 
stantiation of his mother's milk into lamb- 
chops. 



50 SUMMER PICTURES WITH OXE'S EYES SHUT. 

Now arises a frame school-house on the hill- 
top near us, with pleasant grass and green 
beeches about it; and, look! a pretty make- 
believe of house-keeping is contrived with 
these crossed fence-rails, the inclosurc floored 
with nmsscs, Nature's costliest Brussels or 
Persian ; the broken china arranged so neatly 
here, and yonder the suggestion of a tiny 
cradle, empty now, but yesterday filled with 
that first birth of the future mother of man- 
kind, into which the tender maternal instinct 
breathes the breath of life — a doll. Hark! 
(we may hear through the ears as well as see 
through the eyes of revcry, repeating a yester- 
day's dream in to-day) what a gentle hum 
through the opcu windows of the school- 
house, and now what a sudden overflowing 
of happy voices, as from the opening door 
rush the eager faces of twenty girls and boys to 
take possession of the vacant play-grounds! — 
two demure little maidens become ''perma- 
nent tenants" of the play-house; while the 
young mistress of the "infant hive" makes 
a charming window-picture, unconscious of 



SUMMER PICTURES WITH ONE'S EYES SHUT. 51 

the eyes which merely create her for the mo- 
ment, and in another moment send her with 
her noisy flock back into the air, of which they 
are, and into the silence which invades the 
school-house that yet remains. 

Next wavers before us a woodland path — 
sinuous, dark, and cool — into possible faiiw- 
laud. How tender and comforting is the 
quiet and freshness! — 

''Nature, with folded hands, seems there,' 

blessing the wanderer. Let us not follow it too 
far. Yonder, at the opening, is a saw-mill; 
and this, we might discover too late, is the 
path along which the ruined wood-gods have 
been dragged groaning. 

Now we are sitting on the porch of the cot- 
tage, concerning which we have hinted fore- 
knowledge with Mr. Boker's line; before us 
descends the green slope, newly planted with 
young maples, toward the country turnpike, 
and at our feet a flowery terrace sends up the 
warm, rich, sultry breath of clover in the noon 
sunshine ; to the left are paths walled with 



52 SUMMER PICTURES MTU ONE'S EVES SHUT. 

moss-touched rocks replaced by Art to ac- 
knowledge and make-believe Nature's deliber- 

ate carelessness ; and, look! two persons ap- 
pear on the silent scene; two sisters (so let 
us fancy them), with their faces under graceful 
and broad drooping hats, pass slowly by. The 
elder, seeming invalid, leans upon the you uger's 
supporting arm; the former is dark, and has 
a pensive feeling in her face; the younger has 
light, lovely hair, and the fresh brightness of 
girlhood in her cheek and on her forehead. 
Over them, instead of the dainty parasol which 
counterfeits protection, is the one-sided, wea- 
ther-worn, and wind-harassed umbrella, which, 
long since, did its full service in rain and snow- 
storm, and had retired, as was fitting, to the 
Homo of Disabled Umbrellas in the closet. 
But old things are come to honor, and never 
was there any thing so becoming as this present 
one in its past uses. 

Yonder rides a solitary horseman — master 
of the woods and fields — in the meridian sun- 
shine ; lie is returning from the village church, 
of which he is, it may be, a pillar in pro- 



SUMMER PICTURES WITH OXE'S EYES SHUT. 53 

fession — we trust he is one in practice ; his horse 
steps slowly, and with a gentle, Sabbath grav- 
ity, — perhaps he w r as not a careless listener 
to the preacher's voice, that, rang an hour and 
a quarter through the open church-door. 

Suddenly, while we are looking far off at 
the yellow uplands of the new wheat stubble, 
and catch a glimpse of a farm-house through 
distant orchards, a thunder-storm, which has 
been lazily brooding in the sultry afternoon 
sunshine, intrudes itself upon our attention; 
it is growing near. How pleasant are all the 
approaches of a Summer shower in the coun- 
try! The wind that runs before seems to 
make merry roughly with every thing; the 
geese, and other "tame villatic fowl " appre- 
ciate the humor of the play — the former 
rising and flapping their wings as if they felt 
the original wild-goose within, and meant to 
visit far-off regions; the Guinea hens are con- 
cordantlj- and discordantly vociferous; the 
little, healthy children of the household race 
wildly back and forth, with shaken hair and 
happy laughter. The orchard trees, waving, 



54 SUMMER PICTURES WITH OSE'S EYES SHUT. 

fling down their early-ripened fruit; the pop- 
lars Bhiver and shake; the oak-trees toss their 
boughs, and all Nature is lively. Now the 
storm is overhead, and the rain is pouring — 
how eool and pleasant is its breath, as we 
look out upon it from the open window! 
That fearful, beautiful arrow of lightning! — 
the almost instant, terrible thunder! The 
black locust, fifty rods away, took the thun- 
derbolt. Other flashes and thunder-peals fol- 
low, with interrupted and repeated rain; but, 
before we arc well aware, the skirts of the 
storm, westward, are lifted, and the sun has 
created a rainbow — that old, lovely, ever new 
miracle. A little later, the whole atmosphere 
is full of golden mist, and the gates of Eden 
seem open in the West. We think of Words- 
worth's tine lyric rapture, inspired by such a 
marvelous Evening Splendor: 

" Ami if there be whom broken ties 
Afflict, <>r injuries assail, 
Yon hazy ridges to their eyes 
Present :i practicable sc:ih\ 
Climbing, suffused in sunny air, 
To stop — no record hath told where: 



SUMMER PICTURES WITH OXE'S EYES SHUT. 55 

And tempting fancy to ascend 
And with immortal Spirits blend! 

" Wings at my shoulders seem to play ; 
Eut, rooted here, T stand and gaze 
On those bright steps that heavenward raise 
Their practicable way. 

Come forth, ye drooping old men, look around, 
And see to what fair countries ye are bound ! " 

Meanwhile the sun is going down ; the last 
rays touch the oak-tops on the hill, and soon 
the darkness gathers slowly over hill and val- 
lc} T , and from the woodland shrills the oft- 
repeated melancholy cry of a single whip- 
poorwilh 
So our 

— eyes make pictures when they're shut; " — 

we open them, and read, in the daily jour- 
nal before us, such worldly head-lines (all run 
together and confused) as these : 

BY TELEGRAPH. 

latest washington intelligence. 

off the track. 

serious railroad accident in michigan. 

mews by the ocean cable. 

Russia's never ending trouble. — more or less about 

THE CZAR. 

LOCAL CASUALTIES AND CRIMES. 

YELLOW FEVER — WHAT THE HEALTH ' AUTHORITIES SAY. 



56 SUMMER PICTURES KITH ONE'S EYES SHUT. 

THE STATE CONSTITUTION. 

TIIK FARMERS AM) THEIR FIGURES. 

MORE LIGHT IN' THE COTTOM CORKER. 

AX IMPOSING lusi'l.AV OF POLICE. 

THE SERT ART-GIRL QUESTION, ETC. 

These are the world's great interests, which 
we had left behind us for a day ; — they would 
not lot ua wholly forget them, even in the 
midst of our one delightful holiday. The dear 
Heaven pity us ! 

" Was it a vision or a waking dream?" 

"We were in the country — we are hack 
again in town. But we hugged the good 
Mother Earth, and we are stronger for a new 

week. 



UNEXPECTED NEWS OF DEATH. 




^ NE of the later Greek poets, praising 
Homer's well-known comparison of 
the human race to the loaves upon 
trees, goes on to say that but few mortals, 
learning the truth of this sentiment by hear- 
say, take it really to heart. To each, he adds, 
is present the hope implanted in the breasts of 
young men, and so long as one holds the 
flower of youth he entertains light thoughts, 
and imagines many things never to be accom- 
plished, for he has no expectation of growing 
old or dying; nor, when he is in health, has he 
any thoughts of sickness. Hazlitt, in one of 
his essays, quotes, as a Baying of his brother, 
what seems a concise echo of Simonides, that 

(57) 



58 US EXPECTED SEWS OF DEATH. 

no young man believes lie shall ever die. 
And, as this remark applies in some degree to 
each one of us individually in our full enjoy- 
ment of health and in our warm pursuit of 
happiness, we are quite apt to make it apply 
also to those nearest us in heart and blood. 
They, too, wo fondly dream, are gifted with 
this private immortality; and, unprepared for 
death ourselves (we do not mean in the sense 
commonly used by religious moralists), we are 
unprepared for it likewise in these other 
selves of our own. "We do not, indeed, fail to 
recognize the great general fact of death in 
the world about us, but we keep this great 
general fact out-of-doors, so to speak, and at 
our neighbor's door instead of our own. Wo 
recognize it as something far away from us, 
even when the hearse passes heavily from the 
gate of some neighbor younger than we. We 
do not let its realization come home to us and 
cast its shadow among our loved ones at table 
and fireside. We hear, it may be, that pass- 
ing voice crying out at our threshold, " Re- 
member thou art mortal;" but it was only a 



US EXPECTED SEWS OF DEATH. 59 

voice, and that we must not let it trouble us 
was our last thought of it. 'We devote our- 
selves to the wishes and purposes of our lives 
as if there were set no bound; and we make 
our household plans aud social schemes, not 
for the actual moment in which we really ex- 
ist, and which we call to-day, -but for the 
seeming eternity on earth, our future, which 
we call to-morrow. 

Yet there arc interruptions to this sense of 
our permanence — this feeling without which, 
perhaps, we could not keep heart for the task- 
work which is mysteriously placed before us; 
and at times we see plainly the smallness of 
the thread on which our own lives are depend- 
ent, and the frail bond by which the warm 
hearts that beat nearest us are held in our 
company, — the great law compels our instant 
reading, the fancied security of ourselves and 
of those who have become a part of ourselves 
is shaken, and we feel how transient is all we 
deemed so lasting. 

This experience does not come to us most 
vividly, perhaps, when we are present during 



60 UNEXPECTED SEWS OF DEATH. 

the illness and at the death of our friends. 
Then sickness, which accustoms the Bufferer 

gradually to the putting away of earthly life 
— weaning the soul gently or painfully — has a 
similar effect noon us, who are the nervous 
and anxious watchers; when the loss is an- 
ticipated Time seems to have begun his 
healing beforehand. But when we open a sud- 
den and unexpected dispatch, that brings us a 
fatal word of which we had no forewarning, 
how poignant is the blow ! It is like the 
stroke in the darkness against which we have 
put out no defense. It is the quick lightning 
out of the clear sky. Or, when, after delays 
of mail, the welcome letter, opened without 
foreboding, and it may be, with a pulse of 
gladness (created by the recognition of a 
familiar handwriting on the envelope) because 
seem about to hear the latest familiar re- 
cords of those in whose daily history and for- 
tunes we arc tenderly interested, gives us in 
its first lines the sudden knowledge which 
has been darkening toward us unseen for a 
week in the atmosphere — how bitter! Mean- 



UNEXPECTED NEWS OF DEATH. 61 

while, ignorant, we have been planning some- 
thing of tender earthly significance and pleas- 
ure, perhaps, for that one whose last hold on 
all things of the earth was loosened and chill 
during all the days we planned. Meanwhile, 
too, it may he, we have written playful words, 
recalling little homely memories made dear 
by mutual sharing and association — making 
thoughtful allusions, touched with light jests 
and laughter, mingled with pleasant house- 
hold gossip and fireside talk ; then, put into the 
mail after the death-da}* of which we were 
unconscious, this letter of our own, mean- 
while, has been journeying to the wonted 
address, and midway, doubtless, passed the 
dark-spirited messenger unknown. Ah, the 
pathos of such dead letters as this one ! But 
how many are thus going ever to and fro; — 
among the hurried business messages, the 
multitudinous missives burdened heavily or 
lightly with all the vast and minute concerns 
of life, how many of these that fly in vain ! 

The bitterness of the unexpected news of 
death, referred to above, is made deeper, per- 



62 UNEXPECTED NEWS OF DEATH. 

haps, when the message comes to us from a 
distant land, and the slow ship that bears as 
the unhappy tidings has been many weeks in 
passage. Meanwhile, we have been receiving 
cheerful and hopeful letters from the dead 
hand, and thus the speechless lips have been 
speaking to us yet with the familiar tones of 
life. And, if we had reason for apprehension 
before, these have dissipated it, and our inex- 
plicable dreams and shapeless presentiments 
of loss have been denied their weight by 
these words flying with hope and encourage- 
ment, which have reached us and been cher- 
ished warmly in our bosoms, long since the 
dear hand that penned and the close heart 
that inspired them with living affection have 
been lying in a stranger's grave in a foreign 
cemetery. Think of that wile whose hus- 
band had been visiting some far-off land to 
seek for the health which home would not 
give back to him. Think of the careful 
anxiety, the eager waiting for happier tidings, 
the nightly thoughts of tenderness and the 
prayers of love, the fitful renewals of hope, 



UNEXPECTED NEWS OF DEATH. 63 

the temporary return of gladness and gentle 
gayety, the light indulgence in social pleasant- 
ries without reproach from her sensitive heart. 
And all these many days the black sail of the 
funeral ship has been glooming invisible over 
the horizon ! And all these many days should 
she have worn the weeds of mourning and 
widowhood ! 

To the temporary sojourner in a foreign land 
the unexpected news of death at home — the 
death of parent, wife, or child — comes with like 
circumstance of added anguish. An Ameri- 
can poet has written of one such experience — 
the death of a little boy, a brother whom, four 
years earlier, he had left at home a child — in 
some pathetic lines, which we shall quote. 
Wandering in the Venetian dawn, he broods 
over the distant bereavement, and can not 
make it seem other than a haunting dream : 

"A dormant anguish wakes with day, 
And my heart is smitten with strange dismay ; — 
Distance wider than thine, O sea, 
Darkens between my brother and me ! 
A scrap of print, a few brief lines, 
The fatal word that swims and shines 



G-l UNEXPECTED SEWS OF DEATH. 

On my tears, with a meaning new and dread, 

Make {altering reason know him dead. 

And I would that my heart might feel it too, 

And unto its own regret he true; 

For this is the hardest of all to bear, 

That his life was so generous and fair, 

So full of love, so full of hope. 

Broadening out with ample scope. 

And so far from death, that his dying seems 

The idle agony of dreams 

To my heart, that feels him living yet, — 

And I forget, and I forget. 

He was almost grown a man when he passed 

Away ; hut when I kissed him last 

He was still a child, and I had crept 

Up to the little room where he slept, 

And thought to kiss him good-bye in his sleep; 

But he was awake to make me weep 

With terrible home-sickness before 

My wayward feet had passed the door. 

Round about me clung his embrace, 

And he pressed against my face his face, 

As if some prescience whispered him then 

That it never, never should be again. 

Out of far-off days of boyhood dim, 

"When lie was a babe and I played with him, 

I remember his looks and all his ways ; 

And how he grew through childhood's grace, 

To the hopes and strifes, and sports and joys, 

And innocent vanity of boys : 

I hear his whistle at the door, 

His careless step upon the floor, 



UNEXPECTED NEWS OF DEATH. 65 

His song, his jest, his laughter yet, — 
And I forget, and I forget." 

But not less poignant is the unexpected news 
of death which the long-absent wanderer — to 
whom no home-tidings have come for many 
months or years — learns, ere he reaches the 
old home itself, in the village graveyard. 
Plays and poems (for example, Wordsworth's 
pathetic pastoral of "The Brothers"'), have 
long illustrated these sorrows, bnt they still 
belong to the living drama of our passion, 
and men yet return, heart-full with glad 
warmth, to their early homes, and find them 
empty, their hearths cold. The prodigal son 
does not always see his father run toward 
him afar-off, ready to welcome him with the 
fatted calf. How full of the bitterness of a 
kindred anguish seemed the experience of one 
we knew — a young soldier in our late Civil 
War — who, after a long fever in a Southern 
camp-hospital, returned home and found all 
the household absent at the graveyard. His 
mother, to whom no knowledge of his illness 
had been given by him until his convalescence, 



66 UNEXPECTED NEWS OF DEATH. 

was deeply anxious about him, and had many 
apprehensions lest his fever had returned, for 
he was expected home and did not come. 
She dreamed of him as a mother dreams, and 
was troubled — for he did not write. Then 
she, too, was taken with a painful illness; and 
in her fever she talked of him, and her waking 
delirium and restless sleep were tilled with 
her motherly distress about him. How she 
longed to see him onee again ! — an earthly joy 
that was denied her. "Within that week, how- 
ever, her boy started homeward. It was late in 
October, 18G5. The railway station was seven 
or eight miles, across the Illinois prairie, from 
his father's house. He crossed the prairie 
afoot, entered the familiar gate, and ap- 
proached the door. The warmth of home 
seemed so near him, though no one came out 
to meet him. How glad was the quick wel- 
come the young soldier expected ! — how happy 
would the face of his mother grow to see him 
safe at home! An hour earlier, lie had seen 
her dead face, at least, with the final peace 
upon it. This sad yet precious privilege was 



UNEXPECTED NEWS OF DEATH. qj 

forbidden by the grave in which she was 
already shut, three miles away; and the unex- 
pected news of death came to him only when 
his father and brothers and sisters returned 
from his mother's burial. 




THE BUSINESS MANS FARM. 




E doubt whether that old man of Ve- 
rona, celebrated by Claudian, who 
had lived all his days in the suburbs, 
and knew of tbe city only by heresay, just as 
he knew of the Indies, however much he 
might illustrate the healthful physical effects 
of country life, could \cr\ well be chosen to 
speak its higher praises. For there is a dif- 
ference between the animal contentment and 
health of ignorance, and the mental and 
moral satisfaction which the intelligent spirit 
takes in a simple natural life. It is not the 
shut ting-up of one's self in rural scenery 
from the first, but the coming-back to it from 
worldly travail, that gives the higher and 
(68) 



THE BUSINESS MAN'S FARM. 69 

deeper feeling for its influences and benefits. 
We doubt if the Garden of Eden, to the 
naked Adam and Eve, who had not eaten of 
the Tree of Knowledge, were quite the de- 
lightful Paradise that a country-seat — with a 
goodly apple-orchard in vigorous bearing, to 
be a gentle reminder of " the fruit of that 
forbidden tree " — is to the worldly-wise and 
weather-troubled Adam in the dog-days, in a 
vague reverie over his ledger at his counting- 
house, in one of the many great cities to 
which he emigrated in company with Eve 
(or, haply, "one of Eve's family") from that 
early, and yet unenlightened, state of blissful 
ignorance. 

In other words, we need to get experience 
of the artificial world, the confined business 
world, fully to realize and enjoy the out-of- 
door natural world. Having the roar of mul- 
titudinous wheels, the jarring of hammers, 
the trample of footsteps, all the sounds and 
voices of busy people, ringing in our ears, Ave 
may best feel the charm of bird-singing, cattle- 



7,i THE BUSINESS MAN'S FARM. 

lowing, water-rippling, leaf-turning, and corn- 
rustling, which are outside of all our present 
hubhub; seeing tlic dusty streets, the burning 
pavements, the hurried motion, the sweltering 
arms, tlic anxious faces, and all the nameless 
and numberless sights of a large city, we may 
create, sweetly and easily, the contrasted 
vision of blowing woodlands, waving hay- 
fields, wandering lanes (that have no especial 
anxiety to reach any place of appointment 
punctually), steadfast but leisurely harvesters, 
straggling and cud-chewing cattle, cool and 
indolent rivers, or bright and dancing brooks, 
pastures crowded with quiet sheep, orchards 
ruddy and golden with their ripening fruit, 
cider mills swarmed about with half-tipsy 
bees, cottage-glimpses through elms and their 
embracing vines, and faces touched with quiet 
cares alone, or sunburnt with healthy work 
and hearty pleasure. 

The country life must have a background 
of the city life for its best appreciation, and 
get its assured sense of the freedom of re- 



THE BUSINESS MAN'S FARM. "J\ 

straint in loose-hanging social habits and gar- 
ments, from the — 

" Black dress-coats and silken stockings," 

and other hampering accompaniments of ur- 
bane society. That many men, even the 
most matter-of-fact ones, think of the country 
life under such circumstances, and with such 
contrasts to " add a precious seeing to the 
eye," is an old story. And that many such 
men retire from their business to such country 
retreats, in fond anticipation, all their lives, 
making investments in land still unsettled (so 
far as their own real settlement is concerned), 
and building airy homes thereon — meanwhile 
going about their old treadmills of business, 
ambition, or office — is, too, an old story. How 
they 

"Resolve and re-resolve, then die the same," 

lias been the frequent theme of poets and 
moralists. Horace's usurer, Alh'dus, who is 
represented as saying : 



7:2 THE BUSINESS .VAX's farm. 

" Elappy the man whom bounteous gods allow, 
W* 1 1 1 1 his own hands paternal grounds to plow; 
Like the first golden mortals, happy he, 
From business and the cares of money free! " * 

and who, picturing to himself the works and 
pleasures, the comforts and contents of such 
an one, was on the point of turning country- 
man, then gathered in all his money on the 
Ides to put it out again at the Calends, is but 
the ancient portrait in which thousands of 
modern bond-holders and "Wall Street brokers 
find their family-likeness to-day. 
But the fact that so man}', who 

— "by the vision splendid 

Are on their way attended," 

about their daily callings, do not ever come to 
Lts realization, does not prove that the happy 
farm of the business man may not be genuine 
real estate to any one. Some have found it 
and have dwelt upon it, and thanked the 

*"Beatns tile, qui prooul negotiis, 
Ut prisca gens mortalium, 

Faterna rura bubus exercet suis, 
Solutis omni fenore." 
— 1 1 oiiACE, Book of Epodes, Ode IT., Cowley's paraphrase 



THE BUSINESS MAN'S FARM. 



73 



good God for their release, from the dust, and 
heat and burden of the day, into that rural 
peace and quiet becoming to the closing-in 
of the beneficent Night wherein no man shall 
work. 




A CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 



*• 



T is very pleasant (and a frequent habit 
of charitably disposed people) to look 
^±^^1 out of our own cheerful windows, and 
sec but the bright reflection of our own warm 
rooms, instead of the darkness of the street, 
full of cold and hungry faces, beyond the 
window-panes. 



There arc times when the pulse flags ; when 
the spirit sleeps, apparently, the sleep that 
knows no waking ; when we wish the shutters 
closed, and the knocker tied up : — we arc sick, 
but would have physic thrown to the dogs, 
we'll none of it; we are, indeed, to all in- 
tents and purposes, for the time being, dead. 
(74) 



A CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 75 

"What shall quicken us with new breath ? — 
what shall make the heart throb strongly 
again? — the pulse beat the music of life 
instead of the muffled funeral march? Men 
have tried many stimulants; — the stimu- 
lants they use but require the use of more. 
The intoxication of drink sets the world 
whirling, indeed, — the pulse galloping, the 
thought flying; but the fast clock soon runs 
down, and the unnatural excitement leaves 
the lonely house it has filled with unwonted 
revelry more silent, empty, and sad. Love is, 
we know, the great stimulant, most intoxi- 
cating of all, and performs all happiest mira- 
cles ; it makes the sick man well, 

— " The lame his crutch forego; " 

but it is a miracle, the chief of miracles, itself, 
and is not at any drug-store, whatever they 
say. Next to Love, there is another potent 
stimulant, which, though it never intoxicates, 
accomplishes many wonders; and if Love be 
present with it, the cold water it offers us is 
transmuted iuto costliest wine : — we mean 



76 -1 CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 

Duty. Duty puts over each dark day, for 
every man, a blue sky, into which a lark has 
gone singing. It is the best inspirer of those 
fine heroes who conquer themselves. 



True success is perhaps only onr own inward 
recognition of progress toward the ideal goal 
of our own hearts or spirits. 



The oak feels a possible forest within its 
leaves at each spring-time, and at every autumn 
shakes it down and sows it in acorns. 



It is an unwise habit of very well-meaning 
people to be continually possessing themselves 
of something too good for present use. It is 
well enough to have provisions — vegetables 
and fruits, for example— preserved and sealed 
for winter use; but it is very unprofitable to 
furnish rooms in so elegant and costly a man- 
ner as to keep the feet of your children, and 
shut your own enjoyment, out of them ; it is 
unprofitable to buy books with covers too fine 
to permit the leaves within to be turned by 



A CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 77 

familiar fingers, or the illustrations to please 
and instruct familiar eyes. To-morrow may 
be a well-deserving personage, and it is proper 
to make suitable preparation for his reception 
and entertainment ; but we should not forget 
that, as Emerson has happily said, " To-daj- 
is a king in disguise." 



The face of a newspaper reflects the world's ; 
the world looks into it each day to see itself. 



"What little things — seeming trifles of which 
we may be at the time, and remain ever after- 
ward, unconscious — sometimes affect the whole 
current of our lives. In illustration of this 
remark recurs to us the touching little story — 
some will read it not without tears — found in 
the " Recollections " of Samuel Rogers : a 
story told him by Sir Walter Scott, in the 
autumn of 1831, on the day before the latter's 
embarkation for Malta, whence he returned 
only to die. " There was a boy in my class 
at school," Scott said, " who stood always at 
the top ; nor could I, with all my efforts, sup- 



7S A CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 

plant him. Day passed after day, and still lie 
held his place, do what I would; till at length 
I observed that, when a question was asked 
him he always fumbled with his fingers at a par- 
ticular button on the lower part of his waist- 
coat. To remove it, therefore, became ex- 
pedient in my eyes ; and in an evil moment 
it was removed with a knife. Great was my 
anxiety to know the success of my measure, 
and it succeeded too well. TVhcn the boy 
was again questioned, his fingers sought again 
for the button, but it was not to be found. In 
his distress he looked down for it ; it was 
to be seen no more than to be felt. He 
stood confounded, and I took possession of 
his place; nor did he ever recover it, or ever, 
I believe, suspeet who was the author of his 
wrong. Often in after life," Scott went on to 
say, " has the sight of him smote me as I 
passed by him ; and often have I resolved to 
make him some reparation ; but it ended in 
good resolutions. Though I never renewed 
my acquaintance with him, I often saw 
him, for he filled some inferior office in one of 



A CIIAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 79 

the courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow ! 
he took early to drinking, and I believe he is 
dead." Rogers characterizes Scott's boyish act 
as " an achievement worthy of Ulysses him- 
self," but Sir "Walter could scarcely have been 
proud of it, and seems, from his own account, 
to have been sensible of the life-long misfor- 
tune which apparently resulted to the " poor fel- 
low " from his school-boy stratagem. The boy's 
happier fate hung by the button, and his 
schoolmate's unrecognized hand held the 
shears of destiny. 



Nothing can give us a more pathetic appre- 
ciation of Pope's familiar phrase, " Lo, the 
poor Indian," than the statement which we 
have just seen made, that a remnant of the great 
Mohawk tribe is now resident in ISTew York 
city, and occupies basement rooms of a ten- 
ement house. Our old romantic notions about 
the red man of the forest, which must linger 
and live in spite of the damaging things spoken 
of him by modern observers, is shocked at this 
pitiful taming-out of the noble savage race. 



SO ^ CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 

It is said that these Indians, nearly a hundred, 
used formerly to revisit their old homes, near 
the St. Lawrence, during the summer months, 
but at present they stay all the year round in 
the city. They are Roman Catholics, and at- 
tend Roman Catholic places of worship. 



Sorrow is a great wise teacher from Heaven, 
but we, like little ignorant children, grow pale 
with having to learn her lessons by heart. 



A hero always comes forth from the atmos- 
phere of agreat deed, as Virgil's ./Eneas from the 
cloud in which Venus had veiled him, witli 
a glowing and godlike face; a heroine rises 
from the atmosphere of a good deed, as Venus 
herself from her cradle of sea-foam, beautiful 
with divine beauty, the worship of men and 
the model of women. 



" The groves were God's first temples," and 
it is good oftentimes to go forth from His later 
temples of brick and stone; out of His houses 
built with human hands; out of the gorgeous 



A CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 81 

gloom of stained cathedrals ; out of the sight 
of velveted and cushioned pews and pulpits; 
out of the sound of organs shaking these 
structures, too often empty of the presence of 
God Himself; out of the fashionable assem- 
blies of formal church-goers — into those old 
solemn churches, where the light is only inter- 
rupted and made a "dim religious light" by 
the shadows of leaves; where the birds are the 
choristers and the wind in the tree-tops touches 
fitfully the keys of the silent organ ; where 
the old, sweet, tender sermons are forever 
preached to the listening heart by the preachers 
without parish whom Shakespeare and other 
poets have recognized and interpreted. 



What's in a name? That is a question 
easily asked, and answered easily in the one- 
sided way, that " Brutus will start a spirit as 
soon as Csesar," or that " A rose by any other 
name would smell as sweet." And, certainly, 
there is often little in a name, with its present, 
however much there may have been with its 
original, application ; we refer to " proper 



82 -1 CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 

names" — so-called, however improperly. Let 
us think of some that we know. Mr. Little, 
we remember, is very big; Mr. Small and Mr. 
Smalley are both quite large; Mr. Blaek is 
found to be bleached out, and is eligible for 
"a white man's government" (what is now a 
" pure Democracy," we believe) ; while Mr. 
White is a candidate for the colored suffrage, 
and has a " visible admixture." Tom Short is 
long-drawn-out ; Sam Long, to use a vulgar ex- 
pression, is "nothing shorter." "And that's 
the short and long of it," as Hood observes of 
the short man and his tall wife. But what 
pigmies Mr. Little's ancestors may have been 
— how gigantic Mr. Long's! And so forth. 
We do not mean to presume that such names 
as these were originally given as appropriate 
descriptive designations, but to show how, if 
they were so given, time and the whims of na- 
ture have wrought confusion in the propriety 
of the family nouns. It was said of some 
great anonymous, "slat nominis umbra;" — it 
may often be said, perhaps, of a person nom- 
inally well known, that he indeed stands the 



A CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 83 

shadow of a name, for he is not the substance 
indicated. There is no end to pleasant and 
odd suo-jjestions about the multitudinous words 
meaning men and women, which crowd our 
directories; — the trades-people, by the way (for 
we may presume that at some remote period 
they took their designation from their callings), 
are fearfully and wonderfully confused ; but 
we shall not now follow our fancies into the 
terrible Babylon whither they would lead us. 
"What's in a name?" Can you depend on 
Carpenter to build you a house ? Will Taylor 
mend your garments? "Will Smith attend to 
your horse's hoofs? Will Shoemaker not go 
beyond his last? 



It is a bright, soft, gentle day of March. 
Sauntering forth this lovely afternoon, we see 
everywhere a constant flow of pleasant faces 
through the streets : men and women in holi- 
day garments ; graceful maidens, with charm- 
ing hats and breeze-caressed veils, confident 
that Spring is in the world, for they have it in 
their hearts; little school-girls, whose shadowy 



84 A CHAPTER OF PARAGRAPHS. 

hoods can not keep the sunbeams from being 
in their eyes; happy boys, let loose from the 
old schoolmaster, Time — the young and the 
old together; -while the streets themselves, we 
fancy, are wishing themselves rural solitudes, 
so they might feel the new spring-warmth with 
fresh hearts of flowers. And through the 
sunny quiet, how pleasantly, far away in the 
country air, go the sounds of the city, — the 
trample of its busy feet softened and lost, 
and only the tender voices of bells haunting 
placid waters with their dreamy music. There 
the calm air broods over pastures that send 
the smell of growing grass abroad; the cattle 
stand chewing the cud, contemplatively, and, 

Where road and valley meet, 

Nor huddled close, but whitening all the scene, 
Wide-scattered flocks, with many a vernal bleat, 

Call patient and serene. 



A HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 



Sa/ftSi HANDFUL of maple leaves lying 
^Jm\v> u P on * ne TaD le before us, marvelous 
"HePV^n with their variety of exquisite colors, 
reminds us of the presence of October, and so 
we shall beg leave to take our theme from 
the almanac. The progress of October is like 
that of some grand monarch of the East, 
with his gorgeous robes of gold and crimson, 
and flying colors of leaf and flower; — all 
the earth and heavens are flushed with his 
coming and going. 

And if May be Queen of the Year, surely Oc- 
tober maybe entitled King (unless, indeed, we 
shall fancy him a sort of Red Republican). 
These two are the most poetic of the months ; 

(85) 



86 A HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 

they are "the poet's seasons when they flower." 
May is the very breathing-time of new delight, 

and is associated with all ideas of youth and 
freshness, and beauty and gladness; — leaves 
are full of the young dew of the year, and 
flutter in the breezy sunshine like fairy 
dancers; flowers are just painting all the 
earth, coming as if at the wand of some 
sweet enchantress, whose obedient spirits are 
all loving and lovely, all with fragrant souls 
and beautiful faces; birds have nestled down, 
singing, into the green heart of the new 
Spring, and find that a great deal of the " bliss 
of Paradise " has "survived the fall" of the 
last year's leaves, which roofed their Eden — 
for they sing as joj-ously as ever, and make 
Nature's solemn heart as full of sweet voices 
and delicate pulses of music; youths and 
maidens go forth in wood and meadow to 
"fetch in May" with their hands, as they take 
and bring it back in blood and bosom. But 
October is the matured season of the year — it 
is that season which brings "the philosophic 
mind." AVe fondly recall the blossom but use 



A HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 87 

the fruit ; we think of the green spring-leaves 
and see the crimson kiss of decay on those 
of Autumn. "We dream of being young and 
are growing old. (Ah, have we not grown 
old?) In May we are full (as every thing is) 
and flushed with the earth's fresh blood ; in 
May we talk not of October, — in October we 
think of May. With the ripened fruit of the 
orchard and vineyard, — with the garnered 
store of the harvest-fields, — the hope of the 
3"ear is completed or blasted ; and we recognize 
a correspondence of results in the season as it 
touches our lives. It is the sober time of tran- 
quil fullness of experience, of peaceful thought 
and quiet feeling, when 

" Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought we love 
To ruminate." 

October opens the door to (if it be not part 
of) that lovely season poets have called the 
Sabbath of the year, and breathes a hushing 
breath before its approach, as Saturday Xight, 
in the good old-fashioned, witch-burning, 



88 A HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 

Quaker-hanging Puritan era, was the prayer- 
hushed threshold of Sunday, when the steps 
became solemn and week-day noises grew 
still. 

Nature's temples in October are growing 
awful with "expressive silence;" the birds 
that, jubilant, made the great aisles of the 
forest ring with their sweet minor voices of 
praise — harmonious always with some deep 
organ's sublime utterance — are mostly flown 
or flying away; the solemn windows of the 
heavens (which are soon to be opened, as we 
know) are richly stained, and through all the 
world streams the " dim, religious light." Is 
it any marvel that our spirits should now be 
hushed and chastened? — that into our thouuhts, 
with the sound of winds and waters only, or 
the still small voice which is not interrupted 
by these, should breathe the painted light that 
touches every tiling with a holier and tenderer 
beauty? — that the images which throng our 
souls, like the slatues of saints and pictures of 
sacred and ancient histories iu great cathedrals, 
should shine out and be illuminated and 



A HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVFS. 89 

transfigured by the breath of that more glorious 
light ? 

As at night the sweetest and most spiritual 
and subtile poetry takes its wings most visibly 
in our souls, so in Autumn the deep currents of 
sentiment within us steal forth. The deepest 
and tenderest poetry, indeed, is wreathed with 
dying flowers and fallen leaves. That which 
is beyond us, and for which we long, comes 
to our recognition with the still spirit of 
Melancholy : 

"She dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die, 
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
Bidding adieu," 

says Keats. Melancholy is the soul's appre- 
ciation of beauty — "beauty that must die," — 
and of the divine and deathless beauty that is 
suggested by the transient and mortal. The 
inmost yearnings of the spirit of man arc con- 
nected subtly with Death and the Tast. In 
October we are homesick. All the regrets 
that, like haunting footsteps, echo in the silent 
chambers of memory, come back in October. 
We long for and dream of all that has been 



90 A IIAXDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 

or may be. The faces that are " two handfuls 
of white dust," look into our hearts with gentle 
and beautiful smiles from graves of gone years, 
or from that unseen Sphere which has bereft 
us. (The soul, in its diviner moods, perhaps, 
seems ever an orphan — a wanderer that broods 
over old grave-stones and thinks of old homes 
in a new Earth.) "We sec, more seemingly 
palpable and real, that divine mirage, so beau- 
tiful, which the desert itself may suggest within 
us: that floating dream haply created by our 
thirsty lips, by the unsatisfied want of our mor- 
tality, by the sun and sand: the vision which 
all, in some way, trust to find substantial when 
they shall surely awake, and which human 
sympathy and affection name in many lan- 
guages, differently perhaps, but with the same 
meaning — Heaven. 

This mingling of sweet and tender and mel- 
ancholy thought with the year's consummation 
and its beautiful decline has expressed itself 
through all the poets. It would be heresy to 
all established custom to write of either May 
or October without quotation of poetry. May 



A ITAXDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 91 

and October, as we have said, are the poet's 
months — one the bright Epicurean season, en- 
joying the sunshine of to-day, the other full 

of that 

"divine philosophy 

As musical as is Apollo's lute." 

Who, in writing of May, would dare to 

forget hearty old Chaucer, the great poet of 

May, whose May thoughts come to us from 

his good "well of English undefiled" (for it 

was of his early language that these words 

were first used) as fresh as May-dew, and with 

as joyous a charm, forever? Who can forget 

his description of May morning, when 

— "firy Phebus riseth up so brighte, 

That al the Orient laugh eth of the lighte?' etc. 

Chaucer is the poet of May; Shakespeare of 
all seasons. And who of all the poets (but 
Shakespeare is all molded into One), has said 
more expressive things of the October time? 
None will fail to recall Macbeth's mournful re- 
flection, 

" My way of life 
Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf," 

or that most beautiful line in the sonnet de- 



92 -1 IIASDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 

scribing old age by comparing it to the season 
of leafless boughs, 

" Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. " 

And very many other passages will recur, which 
are part of our choice autumnal language. 
But perhaps for delicate plaintiveness and 
sweetness of pensive sentiment nothing can be 
quoted more fit for the season and the accom- 
paniment of these leaves upon our table than 
the following verses, by James Montgomery : 

"Sweet Sabbath of the Year, 
"While evening lights delay, 
Thy parting Btep methinks I hear 

Steal from the world away. 

"Amid thy yellow bowers 

" r is. sad, yet sweet to dwell, 
While fulling leaves and fading flowers: 
Around us breathe farewell. 

"A soft and tender streak 

Thy dying leaves disclose, 
As on Consumption's ghastly cheek 
'Mid ruin blooms the rose. 

"Thy scene each vision brings 
< If beauty in decay, 
Of fair and early fading things, 
Too exquisite to Btaj ; 



A HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVE*. 93 

"Of all that now may seem 
To Memory's tearful eye 
The vanished rapture of a dream 
On which we gaze and sigh." 

— Kow does the frost begin its nightly minis- 
trations, and touch with stealthy fingers the 
yet green leaves ; now will the corn-fields 
glitter with all their twinkling blades of gold 
in warm and hazy noons; now will the nuts 
be dropping evcry-where in vast woodlands, 
and the boys will be gathering the walnuts 
with hands innocently stained — brown with 
merry toil ; now will the cider be oozing from 
the bee-frequented presses, and the house- 
wives in the country will busy themselves with 
the paring machine and the copper kettle; 
now in rural places, where Fashion and her 
city manners have not destroyed the blithe 
old customs, will the apple-cuttings flourish 
on moonlight nights, and, after countless 

merry 

" Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, 
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles. 
Such as hang on Mollies cheek — " 

(Pardon, Master Milton — Mollie serves as well 



94 -1 HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 

as any mythological Hebe, and was the cup- 
bearer wo best- remember), and, after the 
"Marching to Quebec" and " Io, Sister 
Phoebe," and twenty other games, Bob will 
start home with Sue. and Miss Mary Brown 
will take Christopher Jones's arm, and the 
great round moon will look beautiful and 
romantic, and the stars will wink prettily and 
coaxingly, and the air will be " rather chilly," 
and — and so forth ! 

Welcome, October; welcome thy dreamy, 
delicious afternoons, when the air hangs 
breathless over the death-beds of the flowers, 
and when 

" Heavily hangs the hollyhock, 

Heavily hangs the tiger-lily;" 

Welcome thy clouded evenings, when 

" The charmed sunset lingers lew adown 
In the red W( 

Welcome thy gladness and thy sadness; thy 
grains in the stack and the corn-bin ; welcome 
thy buoyant mornings, that 



A HANDFUL OF AUTUMN LEAVES. 95 

" Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye," 

the gathering of thy fruits in the orchard 
and the transfiguration of thy fallen and fall- 
ing leaves. 




A NEWSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE ON ITS BIRTH- 
DAY. 




IIIRTY-FIVE is not often an age for 
confession, but a newspaper need not 
blush to own it. That was a bright 
day — however dark it may have been to the 
weather-prophet — the 24th of November, 1830, 
when we became a living newspaper. Mind 
you, it is the Louisville Journal speaks — not 
one of the several somewhat gray and grizzled 
gentlemen "connected," as they are proud to 
say, with us. Just now we forget the connec- 
tion ; let them stroke their beards to their 
bosoms, and brush the stray locks across their 
shining baldness ; — they maybe passing fifty, 
but thirty-five is our hey-day oflife. 

Yet, alter all — we may safely confess it — we 
(96) 



A NEWSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE OX ITS BIRTHDAY. 97 

are growing old. Thirty-live years exhaust 
half the human chances of time. At thirty- 
five, men enter the half-way house, in whose 
eastward chambers are dreams of youth — from 
whose westward windows is the forecast of age. 
This half-way house is on the very summit of 
life ; — behind are the eager and early harvests ; 
before, and away below, are the white har- 
vests, the ripening fruits, and the Reaper. 
But you will say, generous reader, that a 
newspaper may live a thousand years, and 
what to it are thirty-five? We thank you. 
The)* are much in the past; let them be little 
in our future. 

Our funeral bells shall not ring this morn- 
ing; yet there is something mournful in rejoic- 
ings at returning birthdays, for they recall the 
earlier ones. "We imagine those occasions 
which latterly are made so much of, the silver 
and golden weddings, are saddened somewhat in 
the same way by vague regrets for youth and 
youthful freshness, and for the diviner warmth 
of the first wedding — to which Nature brought 
her costliest gifts of ecstacy, for which no 



98 A NEWSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE OX ITS BlRTUlhl V. 

precious metal nor priceless stone may give a 
name. While it is pleasant, therefore, for us 
to feel our friends gathering around us, and 
wishing us many returns of our fortunate da}', 
a sense of sadness touches us for those whose 
faces we shall miss, whose voices shall not be 
heard in words of congratulation and sympathy. 
For a newspaper, God bless us, thinks of 
many graveyards; it has its friends — its warm, 
and strong, and dear ones — and they pass away. 
We can not name our own, for they are num- 
berless — we shall refer you to our moldered 
subscription books; ask us not for their ad- 
dresses — their old and once familiar addresses : 
— look at the worn-out Post-office Directories. 
Many of them, how many, have removed to 
that country in which the President has no 
power to appoint postmasters ; to which the 
Postmaster-general finds no mail communica- 
tions open. It was a pathetic remark of Dr. 
Johnson: "We shall receive no letters in the 
grave;" and a newspaper may feel poignantly 
the solemn reflection that we can receive no 
subscriptions from the grave. No editions 



A NEWSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE ON ITS BIRTHDAY. 99 

have been issued for, and no mail contracts 
made with, the Last Passenger boat. 

Friends of thirty-five years, how many of 
you are reading us over your breakfast-cups, 
or in your counting-rooms, this morning? How 
many of you remember our original and genu- 
ine birth-day? Let us greet you, and have 
your common sympathy. For, have we not a 
close kindred feeling? Many of those years 
which seem so little to a newspaper's future, 
are much to our common memories. And the 
melancholy which we feel goes more tenderly 
through your -hearts. Look at the figures as 
they stand: 1830-1865; — thirty-five years are 
between these mile-stones. How many of you, 
we repeat, remember to have passed with us 
the first ? It was a glad time ; 

— " The harvests glowed, 
And the earth danced in Heaven's near light." 

Those years are put away more feelingly in 
your hearts than they have been in our col- 
umns — with all their varied circumstances of 



100 A NEWSPAPER'S MOSOLOGUE OX ITS BIRTHDA V. 

Life and death; event and accident; growth 

and change — thirty-five years! 

Venerable sir (whose eyes are now so 

benevolently fixed 141011 us), how long is it, we 

beg, that yon have known us chiefly through 

your glasses? Ah, you shake your head, 

thinking of funerals that have made them dim 

with other mists than those of time, and arc 

silent. Gentle madam, how many years is it 

since it was our pleasure to whisper to the 

world, under the unobtrusive but always 

looked-for " Married " heading, that one man 

had reached 

— " the only bliss 
Of Paradise that has survived the Fall " 

through you — so young; so tender; so sweei 
with goodness, grace, and beauty, then ? (That 
happy man touches his smoking coffee caress- 
ingly with his spoon while reading this, and 
smiles across the table, and murmurs, "Mrs. 
Smith, how long is it, my dear?") "Twenty- 
live years," your thoughtful answer is to us 
and "John" together. So long — BO long — 
so long? And yet, " Mrs. Smith, '* your face 



A XEIVSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE OX ITS BIRTHDAY. \Q\ 

has not lost the freshness of young woman- 
hood, and "John" seems to keep "youth at 
the prow and pleasure at the helm " of every 
day still. Esteemed young friend, whose voice 
was so eloquent for ours and us in those 
warm campaigns before the sad war just 
ended had burdened the air with its fast-com- 
ing gloom, how many summers have the polit- 
ical butterflies fluttered since — a boy eager on 
the first steps of ambitious studies — you first 
read this Journal's columns? " Fifteen," you 
answer. So long — so long, indeed? Dear 
lady (we well knew your charming school-girl 
face when our carriers met you, on their 
morning rounds), you remember when at sweet 
sixteen you took our "Weekly from your fath- 
er's table, and read "Amelia's " * poems by the 
light of a dream, and with the flutter of a dove, 
in your bosom? Pray, how long ago was 
that? " ," you answer, with your fin- 

* The poems of "Amelia " (Mrs. Amelia B. Welby), 
once quite popular in this country, were first printed in 
the Louisville Journal. 



102 *1 NEWSPAPEB'S MONOLOGUE ON ITS BIRTHDAY. 

ger, drawing the expressive dash in air, archly 
smiling. So long — so long — so long? We 
feel that we are growing old, for yon, too, look 

thirty-f we beg a thousand pardons ! 

Good readers, among you all might we not 
glance around, and, wherever you may be, ask 
such questions as these, and receive answers 
which should make the fountains of tears in 
your hearts give up the sweet and glad, or sad, 
spirits of old memories? For, to our morn- 
ing recognition, you have all been sitting at a 
great breakfast-table, and if we have spoken 
a word of wisdom in our thirty-five years of 
living type, we know it has found response in 
many a worthy mind; if we have uttered a 
patriotic sentiment, it has always been echoed 
by many a patriot's sense; if we have given 
light birth to a pleasantry, on many a bright- 
ening lip it has blossomed anew with a smile 
or flashed out merrily with a laugh ; if we 
have said a sweet thing, or a tender thing, or 
a beautiful thing (remember we have dealt 
largely in quotations), how many a heart has 



A NEWSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE ON ITS BIRTHDAY. 103 

felt it? All this appreciation has come home 
to us, and we were not alive this morning had 
not our pulses been strong with the warm 
blood of your encouragement. For a newspa- 
per, too, lives much on the milk of human 
kindness — it requires the sympathy of its 
readers. And now, while we have asked these 
questions and heard your recollections blos- 
soming and beating in your hearts around this 
great breakfast-table where you sit (how many 
you and we have missed about it who left their 
vacant chairs !) is it strange that we are 
saddened, and softened to tearful dreams, in 
our place? 

Here let us not forget (perhaps you, 

readers, have never cared to know) those who 
have been our ministers at home and abroad. 
Printers, we do not cease to remember your 
busy and careful hands; how you have melted 
away like the fonts you distributed! — one or 
two of you, good and faithful servants, yet re- 
main. Editors, show your vanished faces 
again above the fresh exchanges, — without you 



104 -1 NEWSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE ON ITS BIRTHDAY. 

what were we? There is but one* to-day — 
of the many ye have been — who lias 
your procession passing through all those 
days into which we have not failed to accom- 
pany the sun. Newsboys, the newspaper's wise 
children, take our blessing. You are still our 
quick morning immortals, and 

" Never grow old, nor change, nor pass away." 

Ah, we feel that ours has been a pleasant 
life, with these ministers, public and private; 
and what journeys, mail-carriers, have we 
gone with you (whither have ye traveled?) — 
what "hair-breadth escapes " have had — to 
meet our myriad friends in their distant 
homes: not of late years, with trampling en- 
gine and hurrying car; but long ago, with ro- 
mance (dusted or frost-bitten) in the stage- 
coach, or with adventure and daring — through 
woodlands and water-courses, and along moun- 
tain paths — on horses of mettle! 

*George I' Prentice, at whose request this article 
was written for the thirty-fifth anniversary — November 
24, 1865 — <>f the establishment of lii> newspaper, The 
Louitvillt Journal, died January, 1870. 



A NEWSPAPER'S MONOLOGUE ON ITS BIRTHDAY. ]05 

This reminds you, reader, that once we were 
many weeks completing for you the chronicle 
of each day; — now To-Day (when the Great 
Eastern* shall have done as much successful 
wire-pulling as some of our old political friends 
and foes accomplished in their day and genera- 
tion) is likely to give its world-wide history 
to you, in dressing-gown and slippers, with 
cigar and easy chair, in our morning columns. 

We said, a little while ago, that a newspa- 
per thinks of many graveyards ; — and we have 
assisted at many funerals. Let us acknowl- 
edge those most unhappy things we saw, and 
of which we were a great part, — we make our 
good neighbor over the way f our father-con- 
fessor. In the far days which we recall this 
morning, ive, too, went, somewhat downcast, 
with the vanquished, as well as elated with 
the victors. But a newspaper has personal 
feelings, and must not be expected to air too 
freely its sensitive plants. One great victory 

* At this time engaged in laying the first successful 
ocean telegraph cable. 

f A rival newspaper — The Louisville Democrat, edited 
by John H. Harney (died, 1869). 



106 -• NEWSPAPER'S VONOLOGUE OS TTS BIRTHDAY. 

is enough to-day, we trust, for all of us; — let 
us consign the little trifles of political ex- 
ultation or disappointment to the past; let 
them fade away and be forgotten. Old dis- 
appointments of defeat, in petty wars of words, 
might well lose their darkness in the mighty 
presence of gloom, which has shadowed our 
columns and hung our country with mourn- 
ing; those old, little, foolish exultations of 
victory lose their light in the presence of 
brightness so newly apparent, so freshly flow- 
iiur into the thoroughfares of our lives — into 
the windows and doors of our people. 

This, our private yet public New Year day, 
shall end, we pray, as it is beginning, and be a 
vcar of Peace. Let us find you and greet 
you, reader! under your vines and fig-trees. 
And, though we must 

" Look before and after, 
And pine for what is not," 

let us remember that which is given us ; let us 
be thankful for our daily bread, — we trust that 
-hall make you thankful for your Daily 
Newspaper. 



IN WINTER QUARTERS. 




ERY pleasant in many ways — if we be 
well provided with coal and other 
creature comforts, and have enough 
of that praiseworthy sellish cheerfulness which 
makes us temporarily forgetful of other people 
who lack these — seem the beginnings of Win- 
ter: those chill breathings that come through 
the late autumnal twilights, making old and 
young gather closely, blithely, over newly- 
kindled fires that acknowledge but do not fear 
the great Coming Cold. All at once we see 
the whole world's faces in the illumined air of 
Home. All at once a charmed atmosphere of 
quietness and warmth breathes into our 
thoughts and makes us careless, if not forge t- 

(107) 



108 TH WINTER QU4RTEBS. 

ful, of the more gentle out-door season de- 
parted. 

The leaves are fallen, the flowers are 
withered, out-of-doors. Out-of-doors, as the 
poet has sung, "the melancholy days have 
come, the saddest of the year;" but this need 
be ovly the out-door aspect and influence of 
the season. The early winter season is the 
weather-signal for all to go in-doors (shall we 
not rather say for all to come in-doors, for we 
ourselves are already snugly fixed in our win- 
ter quarters?), and, shutting softly out the 
naked and shivering earth, and with the gath- 
ered fruits and well-heaped plenty of the har- 
vest-fields: with fireside warmth and light, 
with wife, children, and friends: with song and 
laughter, and pleasant talk: with all feelings 
that make 

" The summer never shine so bright 
As thought of in a winter's night," 

— to live inclosed in radiant privacy. 

Yet, indeed, — the hearty and healthful lover 
of out-door life may justly claim, — Nature 



IN WINTER QUARTERS. 109 

never, in her more desolate and deserted season, 
when the woodlands are 

" Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang," 

forgets to show forth beauty sufficient to fill 
the sense and excite the love and admiration of 
the observant and appreciative spirit. The 
sky is never lovelier than during the early 
winter time. The -mornings are never more 
exquisite or richer in color. Never more ten- 
derly beautiful do the orange sunsets die away 
than through the black and leafless boughs of 
the December trees, hushing the world into the 
presence of heavens never more divinely deep 
and pure, where the moons make all the 
shivering silence twiukle star-like below, and 
the stars themselves are " atoms of intensest 
light." Think, too, of the meteoric showers 
which happen in the late autumnal or early 
winter season, when the invisible spirits of the 
" darkness visible " have their gigantic games 
of fire-ball! Then, moreover, the Frost has 
begun its wonder-work out-of-doors. (But 
we can observe Irs weird spiritual manifesta- 



]10 IN WINTER QUARTERS, 

tions with our backs to the fire, safely in- 
doors.) Frost is the airy magician who creates 
a phantom-summer on the leafless boughs 
which only the warming sunshine shall disen- 
chant ; and to childish eyes how he paints the 
windows with delight — with exquisite traceries 
of ferns and flowers and forests — and builds 
enchanted castles, " where giants dwelt of 
old," and Aladdin palaces, which poets and 
children only are up early enough to see, and 
wide awake enough, when seeing, to recognize 
for what they really are ! But we fancy that 
with the great majority of us the beauty of the 
winter earth, its miraculous garment of snow, 
its exquisite jewelry of ice, are best appreciated 
when we either view them from our cosy win- 
ter quarters behind the window-pane, or make 
quick and daring adventures and rcconnois- 
sances beyond our fortifications, so to speak, 
into the camp of Winter, with the surety of 
easy and Bafe retreat, should danger threaten, 
within our breastworks. (And, by-the-way, 
is not this a good phrase for the happy bar- 
riers of Home ?) 



IN WINTER QUARTERS. \H 

In alluding to tlie late autumnal and early 
winter time above, we may be held to have 
spoken a little retrospectively— although the 
comparative mildness of the season may be 
said to have extended the proper November 
weather with its "bright late quiet" for into 
December. Now, whether well-provisioned 
and well-fueled or not (but at any rate the 
bountiful latter rains and full river prevented 
the sorely dreaded coal famine) we are in winter 
quarters. Let us pile the smoke-breathing 
Youghioghcny, or the flinty white-ash anthra- 
cite, or, better still, the armful of weirdly 
sighing hickory, and enjoy them. Let us en- 
joy them with heart-full love and gratitude. 
Let us not forget sometimes, too, to open the 
door gently when some sorely-pressed one 
knocks. (Even that One, whom many good 
people name themselves after and profess to 
follow, might possibly come in the disgustful 
disguise of the outlawed tramp — it is most 
likely on Christmas Eve he would prefer to 
choose that very disguise.) Let us not rather 
say — "it was only the wind." 



1 I -J IX WINTER QUARTERS. 

Now the cricket, the homc-poct of all hos- 
pitable hearths and households, — the cheerful 
winter philosopher who preaches, according 
to his beloved disciple and most loving apostle, 
Leigh Hunt, 

" In-doors and out, Summer and Winter, mirth." 

— retired also into winter quarters, shall send 
his pleasant jargonings into the fire-lighted 
circle of his listeners; and blessed now 
are they who have children to take upon 
their knees, and knowing them shall drop more 
ambitious cares ere they fly away and escape; 
yes, blessed are even they, who, like Elia, have 
at least the fairy visits of dream-children in 
their gentle fire-lit reveries, wearing the eyes 
of sonic tenderly mythical '-Alice "W — n," and 
showing the kinship of her soul. 

Let us shut the doors with music, saying, 

" Blessings be with him and eternal praise," 

the good poet Longfellow, for taking from old 
Kome and setting in sight of all the mile-stones 
we may pass, out on the dusty highways of the 



7iV WINTER QUARTERS. H3 

world (all roads properly lead to Home even as 
those of old led to Rome), "the Golden Mile- 
stone : " 

" Each man's chimney is his golden milestone, 
Is the central point from which he measures 

Every distance, 
Through the gateways of the world behind him. 

" On his farthest wanderings still he sees it, 
Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind, 

As he heard them 
When he sat with those who were but are not." 



■fc 




|&sr 



2S& 



GOING TO BED IN A COLD ROOM. 



A "WINTKR-NIliHT IDYL. 




T is a thing sufficiently commonplace, 
unworthy of prose or verse, to go to 
bed in a warm room, where 

" Small busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals " 

as your sleeping, or rather your waking, com- 
panions. You stir the replenished grate, look 
vaguely into the fallen ashes which bear wit- 
ness to the white martyrdom of coal, resolve 
(for you have not the soft, delicious persuasion 
of the sleepy eyelids weighed down with their 
proper night-dew) that it is your bed-hour, 
think languidly of the useless yesterdays and 
the unnecessary to-morrows, bring Macbeth's 
(114) 



GOING TO BED IN A COLD BOOM. \\§ 

soliloquy, it may be, to your private benefit, 
saying : 

" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time" — 

(your clock striking twelve to echo the last 
syllable) : 

"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to restless beds. Out, out, brief candle ! " 

111 lieu of the figurative candle, you turn off 
the fluttering gas-jet, and, as you classically 
phrase it, you "turn in," careful not so much 
of a new morning sunrise as for the fresh 
morning Sun, Times, or Herald. Nothing 
more of you need be known until half-past 
eight a. m. of the coming day, when you think 
lazily first of breakfast (if one had but an ap- 
petite), and then perhaps of business— some- 
what bored by both. 

But blessed and thrice blessed is he for whom 
hardy choice or a most beneficent — even when 
least smiling— Fortune has made his bed and 
smoothed his pillow in a cold room ! He 



]16 GOIXG TO BED IX A COLD ROOM. 

sleeps in Abraham's bosom all the year, in- 
deed. To him are given, night by night, such 
new sensations as those for which kings might 
throw away their foolish kingdoms. lie con- 
quers his Paradise at one shuddering although 
faithful leap, and the gentle tropics over the 
feathers and under the coverlets breathe their 
tenderest influences to confirm its enjoyment. 
Presuming yourself to be that happy per- 
son, reader, we beg to see you safely and snugly 
to bed. You have passed your evening until 
the approaching bed-time in the close, secluded 
company of your books, it may be ; yon have 
had the best human society, into whose first 
circles no ceremonious cards conduct, of some 
favorite novelist; you have shared and enjoyed 
the sweetest and tenderest thoughts and the 
exquisite pictures of some dear poet, the terse 
and wise, or gay and graceful, language of 
some rare essayist ; perhaps you, a bachelor (for, 
if yon are a married man, this whole subject of 
going to bed falls to the ground and disappears 
in a gentle rosy mist), have been traveling in 
the good-humored company of that charming 



GOING TO BED IN A COLD ROOM. \\1 

American couple, Basil and Isabel, on " Their 
Wedding Journey : " — it may be that you have 
had fitful communion with all of these, old 
and new (and Nature makes the old new for- 
ever in healthier and happier temperaments) ; 
but you come at last to a stand-still, or, we 
may say, a sit-still, unbidden. Your sitting- 
room must be comfortable, of course ; it is 
warm, and what you fancy to be cosy ; your 
feet are warm; your fancies go wandering 
through the glowing caverns of the red flames 
before you into that vague frontier of dream- 
land we call reverie. Suddenly you start, and 
think it is time to go to bed. Your thought 
melted away, and was a dream, a moment ago. 
It would not take you long to fall asleep. 

" Sleep, the wide blessing," you say. 

But, of course, you are in no haste to go to 
bed. 

You are alone, and a faint shiver crawls up 
between your shoulders. That is a ghostly 
passage in Macbeth to recall at such a mo- 
ment, — we mean the knocking incident, which 
thrills the fearfully-startled reader of Shakes- 



US QOINQ TO UF.D IS A COLD ROOM. 

peare with a certain consciousness of guilt, 
and makes him fool an accessory while King 
Duncan's murder is shuddering through the 
house. Then you remember it was a sadden 
wind which clutched the sashes (the house be- 
ing old is subject to such ghostly interrup- 
tions), and suggested that terribly wide-awake 
passage whieh haunted you so many years ago 
in boyhood. 

It is a good thing to go to bed ; it will be 
a good thing then to go to sleep. Sleep! 
Sancho Panza said something — what was it? 
— about sleep; and, like Lord Dundreary, you 
stagger through ludicrous mental misquota- 
tions before you reach Sancho'a happy prov- 
erb. Yes, "Blessed be the man" — "Sleep, 
the wide blessing," you repeat; but whosequo- 
tation-marks shall you fold around this ex- 
jion ? Ah, y<>u have it — Coleridge! You 
recall what other poets, too, have said about 
sleep. First, Shakespeare, who has many ten- 
der passages regarding it — that one, for ex- 
ample, iu Macbeth itself, in which he makes 
ii bo sacred in personification : 



GOING TO BED IN A COLD ROOM. ng 

"Macbeth does murder Sleep, the innocent Sleep, 
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of Care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds." 

And the delicious little prayer in Beaumont 
and Fletcher's drama, which seems to bring a 
hushing atmosphere of vernal dusk and dew 
about one to repeat it, occurs to you : 

" Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, 
Brother of Death, sweetly thyself disp 
On this afflicted prince; fall like a cloud 
In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud 
Or painful to his slumber; easy, sweet, 
And as a purling stream, thou Son of Night, 
Pass by his troubled senses ; sing his pain, 
Like hollow, murmuring wind or silver rain ; 
Into this prince gently, oh gcnily glide, 
And kiss him into slumbers like a bride !" 

Wordsworth's slumber-coaxing sonnet comes 
to mind, beginning : 

"A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by, 
One after one; the sound of rain and bees 
Murmuring; the fall of waters, winds, and seas," 

and ending : 

" Without thee what is all the morning's wealth ? 
Come, blessed barrier between day and day, 
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health." 



]20 GOIXG TO BED IS A COLD ROOM. 

Then, with an awakcifing interest in tlie 
drowsy subject, Spenser's famous " House of 
Morpheus" arises in your fancy ; and, desiring 
to see the description again, you take down 
Moxon's edition of Eliza's laureate, and read 
with italics here and there in your voice. 
(Knowing where you place them, we repeat 
them likewise) : 

'• He, making speedy way through spersed ay re, 

And through the world of waters wide and deepe, 
To Morpheus house doth hastily repaire. 

(lie was going to sleep in a hurry.) 

Amid the bowels of the earth full stoepe, 
And low, where dawning day doth never peepe, 
His dwelling is; there Tethys hi.* wet bed 
I)n(h i vet wash, and Cynthia still doth stt 
In silver deaw his ever-drouping hed, 
Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth 
spred. 

("Tethys his wet hed" — a rather uncom- 
fortable suggestion for a cold night, isn't it?) 

" Whose double gates he findeth forked fast : 
The one faire fram'd of burnisht yvory, 
The other all with silver overcast : 
.1 d wakeful dogges before themfarre doe lye, 



GOING TO BED IN A COLD ROOM. 121 

Watching to banish Care their enimy, 
Who oft is wont to trouble gentle Sleepe. 
By them the Sprite doth passe in quietly, 
And unto Morpheus comes, whom drowned deepe 
In'drowsie fit he findes: of nothing he takes keepe. 

(The next stanza is the one, you remember, 
of which Hazlitt wrote : " It is as if ' the 
honey -heavy dew of slumber ' had settled on 
his pen in writing these lines :") 

"And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft, 

A trickling streame from high rock tumbling 

downe, 
And ever drizling raine upon the loft, 
Mixt with a murmuring vnnde, much like the sowne 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a Bwowne. 
No other noyse, nor peoples troublous t 
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne, 
Might there be heard : but carelesse Quiet lyes, 
Wrapt in eternall silence Jarre from enimyes.' 

What a sense of security those " wakeful 
dogges " and the assurance in the last line 
quoted, give to sleep! You, yourself, shall 
hear the watch-dog's honest bark if any one 
comes near your door, and the invasion shall 
neither molest nor make you afraid. 

Now, the ludicrous little story you heard 



\-_>2 GOING TO BED IS A COLD ROOM. 

your friend Smith Tell yesterday (to-day or yes- 
terday shall you call it?) repeats itself to you. 
An old house-servant, a slave, in a Virginia 
family before the war (he is now an African 
citizen of Richmond), was sitting up late one 
night, his old and young masters and mis- 
tresses being out at a play. Nodding a while 
over the kitchen-fire, he concluded to lie down, 
hugging it closely, and soon was dozing. Sud- 
denly the door bed rang, and Sam awoke. 

"Nowdafs some one come to 'sturb me, 
but I sha'n'nt let him in nohow." 

However, he started drowsily, rubbing his 
eyes, as if brushing away imaginary gnats, to 
the door, and, opening it, found a gentleman, 
who had come to call upon the family. 

u Well, my boy," said he, " is your master 

in?' 

"No, sah, he is out." 

" Is your mistress in ? " 
" \o, sah, she is out." 

The caller, after a pause: "Are any of the 
young ladies in ? *' 

"No, sah, dey is all out.*' 



GOING TO BED IX A COLD ROOM. 123 

The caller, after an irresolute moment: 
" Well, then, I will walk in and sit by the fire, 
and wait until they come in." 

"And dat is out too, Bah." 

Yes, your fire, too, is dying out, and — well, 
it has been your bed-hour for some time past. 
It is growing late, indeed — the clock-index ap- 
proaches eleven ; a late hour for an early riser, 
first cousin of lamb and lark. It is very -cold ; 
you begin to feel it taking subtile possession 
of your study-room ; a moment ago, stepping 
into the adjoining chamber for some est rayed 
trifle, you saw the water in a pitcher had put 
on its white overcoat, and the late moon, just 
arisen, shone scintillant over the crispy roofs 
of frozen snow. You must go to bed. 

Yes, you must go to bed. Your fire is burnt 
out ; only a hovering mist of flame flutters here 
and there, and you begin to cover the embers 
that wink at you slowly and drowsily from 
under their soft gray coverlets. " May you be 
covered as well and warm," they seem to say. 
You must wink and blink at them in return 
for a little while ; but, after ten minutes, you 



124 GOIXG TO BED IN A (OLD BOOM. 

rouse yourself suddenly, standing up resolutely 
determined : " Yes, I must go to bed." . 
There! — you cross to the chill chamber-door 

and open it. 

" If it were done, when 'tis done, then t were well 
It were done quickly." 

And now, indeed, you are gone to bed in a 
cold room ! Once under the covers, you begin 
to receive the reward of your virtue. Those 
thin layers of snow that lino the blankets, and 
are familiarly known as sheets, assume a gentle 
moisture and melt away; the wind drops its 
icy treble and sings ^Eolian harmonies; the 
kind household deities breathe their dearest in- 
fluence to give tbeirbeloved Bleep. To-morrow, 
j'on think — no matter about to-morrow, any- 
how. The baker is welcome with his bill, the 
butcher will come with his beef. Somehow, 
jusi then, you thought of that dear and 
blessed time, when, with the gentle motion "!' 
a world of love (in the old farm-house, some- 
where far away, thatched with memories), your 
mother came to tuck her sleepy darling in. 



GOIXG TO BED IX A COLD ROOM. 125 

and — just now you find yourself with some 
tears of blissful sadness in your eyes, awakened 
into the white light of buoyant morning air, 
your breath, like the Afrite of the Arabian 
Nights, above you in the new day. 



-*#¥^ 



IDYL OF A WINTER MORNING. 




XE of the most beautiful of all sights 
for eyes at peace with Providence and 
the Weather (that secondary divinity 
"that shapes our ends'*) to be awakened to, is 
a world buried deep in snow; — not buried, in- 
deed, but warmly laid asleep, by Nature's gen- 
tle hands, under the pure coverlet she has 
woven, through all the still December night, 
on her mystic loom up against the stars. After 
some soft, delicious, tlower-creating night in 
April, you awake, and the peach-boughs seem 
to have beeD touched with magic — how beau- 
tiful! But not less happily suggestive of 
enchantment, not less marvelously beautiful, 
is the Buow-fall, which loads the hare trees 
(126) 



IDYL OF A WINTER MORNING. 127 

as with a myriad blossoms in their first sun- 
rise. Aladdin's Genius built palaces of wonder 
over-night, of which it is not recorded that 
they received final and fatal sun-strokes at 
morning — at least your curly-headed, six-year- 
old laureate of the family Avill not think so, 
for (it may be he will prove a mere historian !) 
did not Aladdin and his princess live in their 
palace? But look at the Snow-whim's pal- 
aces — dazzling the sun himself! 

Ah, you were thinking of ice-houses, were 
you ? 

You open your eyes, breathing the chill in- 
spiration of winter air, your whole body in the 
pleasant summer of a North Temperate Zone 
of blankets, and feel an unusual light in the 
room — a sort of shadow of the white silence 
every- where without ; and, lifting your head 
gently, at once the scene steals upon you 
through the slightly frosted panes : it has been 
snowing! Then you remember there was a 
quiet rustling, scarcely perceived — the alight- 
ing of the numberless wings of the snow- 
fairies, almost inaudible — about your windows, 



128 IDYL OF A WINTER MORNING. 

far into the night : all the midnight was hushed 
to the coming of this mysterious presence ; and 
now all the earth, like an enchanted world, is 
hound by this spell of the snow. 

Soon you hear your children, whose buoyant 
young souls answer (we are decently tearful to 
say, with Meranonmnsic) to the earliest touches 
of the morning rays through their windows, 
merrily breaking the silence below-stair- : 

" Snow ! snow ! " 

Like a new, strange world it comes to them, 
the first snow of the winter, whose approach 
was proclaimed by the white comings of the 
frost in Octohcr, and the long [November rains. 
Like a strange, new world it comes to them, 
and they are the look-outs who cry "Snow! 
snow ! " instead of " Land ! land ! ** 

Into this half fairy-land, this unsubstantial 
dream-reality, they leap, they rush, and take 
possession: not sternly and solemnly, in the 
name of " Ferdinand and Isabella," or any 
other evanescent and temporal powers of earth ; 
but merrily, in the name of Joy, and Love, 
and Hope, and Beauty, the magic and eternal 



IDYL OF A WINTER MORXIXG. ] 29 

sovereigns of the wide realm of Childhood, 
under whose invisible ensigns such new worlds 
are best taken possession of, and can not and 
would not resist. 

By this time, really awakened yourself (poor 
bear in the winter sluggishness of your days !) 
into some former, almost youthful, state of ani- 
mal spirits, by your children's merry hearts 
ringing out their joy-bells so clearly, by their 
laughter and happy-shouting voices, you are 
up, and take a stealthy look below. 

Look! look! Will, and Charley, and 

Jacob, and Benjamin, have a shrewd battle in 
the snow ; the harmless powder flies and smokes 
around their glowing faces, that half illumine it 
with their rosily-flushing brightness, while the 
innocent cannon-balls fly in quick succession 
to and fro, and, instead of taking a hapless 
head off, merely take off the cap of an eager 
combatant, now and then, and leave him hors 
du combat for a confused moment only, when, 
like the reserve at Waterloo, he is " up and at 
them." 

You think of this behind your breath-misted 



130 n ' yi < oF - l WINTER MORNING. 

window-pane, and then young Napoleon's 
snow-generalship of old at the military school 
recurs to you, and soon the mimic cannon-balls 
become cannon-balls in reality, the boy's play 
becomes a man's battle, and the snow-powder, 
which now gleams into the just- rising sun, a 
twinkling mist of diamonds, is the lurid cloud 
of the black gunpowder which makes national 
earthquakes, and whose explosions palpitate, 
and tremble, and echo in a million hearts. 
And you think of Moscow, the terrible Rus- 
sian snow, and Bonaparte's army retreating, 
while 

" Stern winter barricades the realm of Frost;" 

and then again you turn to the boy Napoleon 
and snow-ball battles. 

Meanwhile, little Mary, like a pretty Angel 
of Peace standing beside the battle, or like the 
gentle Good which grows out of the terrible 
Evil, and stands apart from it and behind the 
cloud, watchful, eves her brothers earnestly, 
and sympathizes with all, hailing their loving 
victories. 



IDYL OF A WINTER MORNING. 131 

All this time you have been indolent with 
your toilet, and now that it is finished, 3-011 
take a more extensive view of the outside 
world. 

You live in the country, let us presume — 
yes, and your place is an old-fashioned one; 
yonder you see your cattle in their cheerful 
or cheerless precincts, where they seem so pa- 
tient beneath projecting eaves of snow on their 
foretops, chewing the stray wisps of hay which 
had almost effected a thorough retreat under 
cover of night aud snow-drift. (If a Bergh- 
like fellow-feeling for your beasts of burden oc- 
curs to you just here, and you think you will 
make that little improvement in the barnyard 
at once, why, the suggestion will not be un- 
seasonable.) Then you see your hay-stacks in 
the field beyond, all a-glisten, like domestic 
Alps or Apennines, with the sunrise on their 
summits ; and lo ! the gate-posts have put on 
a weird human air and aspect in their gro- 
tesque head-dresses! The kitchen-maid here 
appears out-of-doors, with a bucket, and tries 
to find the well. It seems to have been the 



]32 IDYL OF A WINTER MORNING. 

special care of the Snow-Whim (for the wild 
spirit of the drift needs an apotheosis into 
capitals and personality) to barricade the well- 
curb, for around it the white hanks are heaped 
up highest. At length, the sweep — the old- 
fashioned well-sweep, which ha- been reli- 
giously and ridiculously cherished by you in 
spite of modern pumps and water-pipes — goes 
up, and a little new snow-storm whirls into the 
breeze and sunrise, and the bright flakes flutter 
like innumerable white doves about Sallie's 
glowing face, as the bucket goes down. 

Jingle, jingle, jingle — here is a sleigh ! Your 
enterprising friend and neighbor, Major Will- 
iams, pioneers the merry company (but he is 
only going to market) that before the day is 
pasl shall make music wherever they go: 
with ch»aks, and shawls, and furs, and blan- 
kets, and buffalo- robes, and warm hearts, and 
bright eyes, and song, and shout, and laugh, 
and love, and happiness, and — sleigh-bells! 

Now you have just thought, by some un- 
der-current suggestion, of Sir John Franklin 
and snow-shoes, of Esquimaux and white 



IDYL OF A WINTER MORNING. 133 

bears (those terrible but easily-melted ghosts 
that haunt the North), and reindeer, and ice- 
bergs, and infinite fields of ice under the 
weird mystery of the Northern lights; and you 
wonder if American enthusiasm will not yet 
burn through a North-west Passage, or whether 
the great Ice-King (whatever that may be) 
will fold his ermine of silence and majesty 
about him forever, and never abdicate his 
throne of solitude at the North Pole. 

" The open sea in that region," so you muse, 
"is — at least an open question, and " 

Your breakfast-bell rings. 

Your wife puts her hand gently upon your 
shoulder at the bottom of the stairs. 

Ah, where summer blooms all the years in 
closely-wedded hearts, what matter if, on the 
brows of two who love, it lias been snowing? 

The sweet soul, the " dear girl," as you call 
her whose "sphere" has been your smile and 
her children's happiness, only, for many a 
year, has been up and down, busy with home, 
for two hours; and how rosy your children's 
faces look, as, with glad appetites, they sit 



[34 



1/(17, OF .1 WINTER M0RS1SQ 



around you, and von see llio Aurora stream- 
ing up over the snow of your age (some peo- 
ple grow old, anil why should we deceive 
you?), from the dream of your childhood that 
has stolon away into their bright eyes and into 
the birds'-nests of their hearts. 

"It snowed, papa," says litt'e Benjamin, 
with his lips like blossoms, and bis blue eyes 
five vears old. 



But he does not mean that you are growing 



old, 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 




E believe the Carrier's New- Year Ad- 
dress may now be looked upon as al- 
most a thing of the Past. At any 
rate, it has become the exception, rather than 
the rule, for the leading daily journals to send 
a yearly greeting to patrons, in that old fash- 
ion, abroad; only what are called the country 
newspapers adhere somewhat to the pleasant 
custom. In the large cities, indeed, the old- 
fashioned Carrier himself is a departed person- 
age. A swarm of quick newsboys occupy his 
place, few of whom become specially identified 
with any individual journal; — each one repre- 
sents all the morning and evening papers. It 
used, moreover, to be a reputable thing for 

(135) 



136 NEW-TEAS ADDRESSES 

fairly accredited poets to write annual pieces 
for the purpose of the Carrier's Address. 
Cotton's poem, " The New Year," quoted by 
Charles Lamb in one of his essays ("New- 
Year's Eve"), seems fitted for such a use; and 
various later British poets wrote verses similar 
in sentiment and occasion — Cowper, Burns, 
and Mrs. Barbauld among the rest; while, in 
Germany, Uhland, with many other singers 
of the Fatherland doubtless, did the same. 
In America, there have been several notable 
poems produced for the newspaper Carrier's 
offering, on New- Year's morning, 

— " On his round 
Through the town." 

One of these, which has been quite popular, 
and familiar for a generation in the school- 
books, is Prentice's "Closing Year," beginning: 

"'Tis midnight's holy hour — and silence now 
I- brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er 
The still and pulseless world," etc. 

Another, of more recent date, is Forceythe 

Willsou's powerful and pathetic ballad, "The 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 137 

Old Sergeant," which first appeared as the 
Carrier's !N"ew-Year Address of the Louisville 
Journal — Prentice's well-known newspaper — 
January 1, 1863; it opens with these lines: 

" The Carrier can not sing to-day the ballads 
With which he used to go 
Rhyming the glad rounds of the happy New- Years 
That are now beneath the snow." 

This poem was never read aloud without 
tears. Dr. Holmes recited it to many au- 
diences, in the course of a lecture, during the 
War of the Rebellion ; while Mr. Emerson is 
reported to have pronounced it one of the 
most remarkable poems written in America, 
and has included it in his collection entitled 
" Parnassus." John Howard Payne, at an 
earlier period, if we rightly recollect, also 
wrote a Carrier's Address for the Louisville 
Journal. 

In most of the old-fashioned New- Year Ad- 
dresses it was the writer's habit, in the person 
of the Carrier, to touch upon the prominent 
points of the past year's history, whether of a 



]38 NEW-YEAS ADDRESSES. 

general or local nature, reviewing them briefly, 
one by one, in style wandering 

" From grave to gay, from lively to severe." 

Of course, written with proper spirit, such 
productions would often be the local literary 
event of the day or season. The natural moral 
of the flight of time would be interwoven, 
and the Address — a song in seeming — not 
unfrequently turned out a sermon. Embel- 
lished with the best skill of the printer's art, 
and made useful with an accompanying alma- 
nac of the New Year, it was often posted 
(sometimes framed) in connting-rooms or of- 
fices, into which there was "No Admission 
Except on Business," and thus the poet, if not 
otherwise, reached a certain qualified inimor- 
tality. 

But it was not our intention here so much 
to discourse upon the New- Year's Address in 
general, as to present, in part or entire, some 
examples of tie 1 thing itself which happen to 
be in our possession. The first we shall take 
up was written for the opening of the year 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 139 

1861, when the chief subject in the American 
public mind was the secession movement in 
the Southern States. It appeared as the Car- 
rier's Address of the Lousville Evening Bulletin 
(an evening edition of the Louisville Journal). 
The tour of the Prince of Wales in the United 
States under the title of Baron Renfrew (with 
his visit to Mt. Vernon-and his gracious conduct 
at the tomb of Washington), the vociferous 
Charleston Convention, the great affairs in 
Italy, the world-absorbing Heenan and Savers 
fist-fight, and the active effort to destroy the 
American Union, were the principal topics 
of the year, and naturally showed themselves 
in the Address. Probably the suggestion of 
it> title, ''Adam's Birthday," was found in 
Lamb's designation of iSTew-Ycar's Day as " the 
nativity of our common Adam." Adam is here 
represented as addressing the Human Race, 
his posterity, at their mighty extension break- 
fast-table, and himself reviewing the Year's 
events — devoting his chief attention, however, 
to America. 



140 NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 

" There was a jolly harvest here and there, 
And fruits (this grape is more than I can hear) 
Ne'er made the Happy Isles more truly blest 
Than your Hesperides, the un-dragoned West," 

he remarks, after mentioning the Years de- 
mise. But human affairs have not Leon in 
evciy respect harmonious : 

" Our family matters have been rather so-so; 
The D 1 visits Eden — Eve, you know so! " 

Of Italy he proceeds to say : 

" The giants, that old Etna thundered over, 
Have had a glorious kicking under cover; 
Enceladus, in (iarabaldi risen, 
Hi- called the sleepless Titans forth from prison. 
— Flower-land of the Hours ! Home of old glories won, 
Above your mountains shines the olden sun ; 
Again your daughters, graceful as the vine, 
Shall dance, blithe ministers of song and wine; 
Again the Roman race shall spring from Earth, 
In her own air give Rome a second birth ; 
Freedom shall clasp her long-lost darlings now; 
'Arms and the man' shall wreathe some Virgil's brow ; 

Art. ] -v. shall keep Earth's heaven their home; — 

From the Past's waves arise, my Beauty, Rome I 
The vampire of the ages flies from th 
Thy lovely shore-, Lavinia, hlussom lice!" 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. J4J 

(The reverend Father ceased his tones inspired, — 
Some later Eve was saying, ' Pa, I 'm tired.') 
As for the et cetera, read the Morning Clipper ; 
I have heen ' half-seas-over; ' — so'm a skipper. 
Heenan and Sayers have made their mark and kissed. 
(Newspaper fame is noted with 'the fist.') 
Ah, Heenan, Sayers, you made the nations stare, — 
Adam was watching in your great P. R. 

There in America they 've had a high time. 
They 've kept my wits— what is that about fly-time? 
The Babel-builders ne'er out-babbled these, 
(I wished I were a Justice of the Peace! ) 
First came (bronchitis take those Charleston lungs !) 
The South Carolina Battle of the Tongues; — 
A hundred million words were spoken in vain, 
And order cut seemed Congress come again ! " 

The reception by President Buchanan, at 
Washington, of the first Japanese Embassy,— 

"My bashful boys, who make yourselves at home, 
Contented in your views of Kingdom Come," 

is alluded to briefly ; then Adam thus men- 
tions the Prince of Wales : 

" Our daughter, Tic, has sent, I 'm pleasr d to say, 
Her boy to school in Young America. 
And Albert Edward— heir from dawn to dawn — 
Through all the forms of Yankee terms has gone. 
I' m glad to see, ' remembering their relations,' 
These pleasant personalities of nations; 



1 (2 NEW-YEAR .1 DDR I ■ 

And yet fjwo bono publico), Bweefc misses, 

Too loath to .-pare this Heir Apparent'* kisses, 

Above (I '11 quote his mother's poet, now — 

Alfred the Great with laurels on his brow) 

' The grand old Ciardener and his wile,' you know, 

Smile at the claims of long descent, 1 below ; 

For, though Prince Albeit (Baron Renfrew)'* race 

Through loins, and Sir Loins, of old Bulls you'll trace, 

This giil beside me was, upon my life, 

First mother of them all — this Gardener's wife; 

And, verbum S:>p, whene'er your fancy wavers, 

Beware, nor let it hang on prince's favors. 

But yet I like, him ; for some days of grace 

Old-fashioned boyhood blooms upon his face, 

And, where your banner-stars should proudest wave, 

Great Britain bowed in him at Vernon's grave." 

The old gentleman now turns to the great 
American subject, and makes his closing 
li — a decidedly Union one. (The editor, 
we notice, in reprinting the piece, compliments 
this speech by saying that it " will electrify the 
heart of every patriot in the land:) 

" At Vernon's grave. My family out West 
Your country's father deemed his children blest. 
I've heard your wrangling, marked your jealousy, 
(Trust me this drop a tear is, in my eye.) 
We Lost the old Eden — full of Heaven's first dew ; 
Behold the Serpent! — will ye lose the new? 
Beware the tempter — we were tempted. (How? 
Ah, Eve, the dear bad girl, remembers, now ' I : 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 143 

I 'm growing solemn;— make your stand a firm one, 

And take my — that is, hear and heed the sermon." 

(Here Adam wiped his brow, and thus began, 

While Eve, beside, proclaimed her Union man): 

" The air takes voices; from the Fast they rise ; 

They haunt your sleep — you waken with their cries. 

From many a bard's, from many a warrior's grave, 

The imploring hand and voice are lifted, ' Save ! ' 

The world is old, and Hope has struggled long;— 

The patriot's death, the poet's prophet-song 

In vain to man their nobler sense have given, 

If this New Light, a meteor, shoots from Heaven ! 

In vain high souls have seen, while great hearts beat, 

Far-shining victories over old defeat ; 

In vain have Freedom's martys sunk to rest, 

Smiling from flames, and, dying, whispered ' West; ' 

In vain your great assembled Congress there. 

With their proud scroll in Time's transfiguring air; 

In vain your battle-glories of the Past, 

When souls were tried — true metal to the last; 

In vain your flag, the awe of half the world, 

On each far sea, and for all men unfurled 

In vain were Lexington and Concord Plain, 

And Yorktown Heights, and Waslnngton in vain, — 

If the Great Constellation's bond be riven, 

And its stars, flaming, fly apart in Heaven ! 

Lo, in the East an awful light a-glow, 

Like a weird painting o'er the life below ; — 

In that rapt dawn, with sorrow in their eyes, 

What mighty group of watchers in your skies ! 

Above the storm, their aureoled brows reprove, 

With grief, not anger — silence, shame, and love! 

Lo, from your sacred places rise the grand 



144 NEW-YEAS ADDRESSES. 

And haloed guardians of your hallowed land, 
Wherever lying, — dust in earth, but yet 
Voices in council men shall ne'er forget; — 
Webster's calm looks the waves of discord sun; 
"Words broken rise: ' Now and forever, One ! ' 
And over Ashland's folded sod, forever, 
Clay's spirit utters : 'Never, never, never!' 

1 1 ere the Great father ceased. I looked around ; — 
Silence was listening. There was heard no sound, 
Save the clock ticking from its oaken cell ; — 
1 M fallen asleep, hearing its midnight knell, 
And slept a moment ; had this confused dream, 
Mingling the gay and grave, — as visions seem, 
A medley strange. The city's bells were loud, 
And the ghost-moon stood on a wreck of cloud. 

Another piece, in which the writer used, 
slightly changed, the patriotic lines just quoted 
for his ahru.pt opening, (" Tlie air takes 
voices," etc.,) represeuted the Louisville Jour mil, 
on t lie succeeding New-Year's Day (January 
1, 18G2). The War of the Rebellion had then 
begun, and been in progress many anxious 
months; the land was full of darkness; there 
is hut one topic — all lesser subjects, in presence 
of the Civil War, tire dropped out of Bight. 
It is entitled "The Nation's New- Year," and 
is written in the same old-fashioned heroic 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 145 

couplets, which here, at least, we fancy, have 
aa overplus of " sound and fury," — the reader 
may finish the quotation if he likes. The de- 
parted Year is thus apostrophized : 

Rise from thy coffin, Eighteen Sixty-One ! 
Rise from our hearts, with every sunken sun ! 
Rise with thy awful spirits, Death's and thine, 
And sweep the stage like Banquo's ghostly line; 
That we, the long procession hushing through, 
In camp and cot may hold our still review. 
— Nay! rather in thy deep sepulcher lie 
Wrapped in the costliest robes of History, 
Praised by the poet till the world shall end, 
The Year of Man, and Freedom's dearest friend ! 
For, though we trembled at thy coming, and 
Felt a great earthquake's footsteps walk the land — 
Our land, most loved — 't was God's own foot-fall broke 
Deaf slumbers, on our threshold, and we woke ! 

The great uprising of 1861 is thus pictured : 

Not when of old the dragon's teeth were sown 
For armed men, was swifter harvest grown. 
They rose, the Men ! one-voiced, one-hearted, one 
In a great lighted purpose, like a sun 
Of Rivht in every soul, on every face, — 
" Who guards our Union, guards the human race! " 
The ice grew fire, and left the mountain's crown, 
"When April's echoes shook the avalanche down. 
The awful marches of the People came, 
Like the volcano's leaping ranks of flame. 



146 NEW-YEAS ADDRESSES. 

They rose, the hot Defenders, swift ;m<l strong, — 
From nightmare dreams that kissed them down so 

long,— 
One, with a myriad hearts and myriad feet, 
From field and fireside, lane and crowded street! 



The New-Year is greeted in the following' 
lines : 



< >h, thou New Shadow of Old Time, we meet 
Thee not, embracing on old thresholds sweet ; 
We meet thee not, as yonder Year we met, 
Suppliant, but sentinel with the bayonet. 

The poem closes with a prayer, which we 
shall venture to repeat; it is perhaps not more 
sanguinary than many others of the time, of- 
fered up from professedly Christian pulpits : 

i i I idd, remember! Let our battle be 

True to mankind, and therefore true to Thee! 

If 't is do selfish hate or pride that now 

Flames in the heart and darkens on the brow ; 

If the great Sacrifice our band shall give 

Through Thy red Priest, be that our Land shall live 

Worthier, remember us. Our lips are dumb, 

Unless strong faith, Thy word of life, shall come. 

( >h give us faith to feel our cause is just, 

In Thy <>\vn breath, the bight, our right hands trust. 

( >h. give us strength to light the battle through, — 
The victory Thine, our blood the crimson dew ; 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 147 

Let the great wrath which stains the skies above, 
Be but the dawning of Thy Day of Love; 
And may this year our Nation's New-Year be, 
With light for man, and endless praise for Thee ! " 

The last specimen, which we shall give in 
full, is written in a lighter, and perhaps a more 
original, vein, although produced at a time, 
January 1, 18G3, when our country was in 
greater gloom than even at the beginning of 
1862. It appeared as the New-Year's Address 
of the Newark (1ST. J.) Daily Advertiser. The 
Proclamation of Emancipation of the same date 
was expected (President Lincoln had issued his 
preparatory proclamation in September pre- 
vious), and General Burnside had just been 
designated to command the Army of the Po- 
tomac; — the Old Year, it seems, had some con- 
fidence in his generalship — at least was willing 
to give him, or have the New Year give him, 
a trial. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to say that 
each of the pieces here noticed was by the 
same hand. 



I } N new-year addresses 



THE CARRIER'S ADDRESS. 

THE OLD TEAR'S DEATH. 

Newsl News! The Year is dead. Tic died last night. 

Just like an old man's faded out his light, 

In darkness, with hut little human sound; 

The Hours with muffled footsteps moved around 

Without, the infinite fields of Heaven were bright 

With starry blossoms— gardens of the Night — 

And the wind, sounding like a widow's moan, 

Or her lost children's wail, was heard alone: 

Within, the embers breathed in ghostly gloom, 

And His thin face with terror lit the room. 

HIS MOURNl RS. 

Few friends were 'round him: those who in his will 
Expected something — these are mourners still, 
And wear the sable cloak of Memory 
About in sunshine, sighing, " Woe is me ' 
For he is dead, our loved, our loving friend." 
But he is in his coffin: there's an end. 
They shall mourn more to-morrow, when they learn 
From Time, that gray old lawyer, slow and stern, 
They were not mentioned by the aforesaid Year 
In will, or codicil, or anywhere! 

But hold ! — too fast ! the truth must be revealed : 

For the great will, at midnight signed and scaled. 

Leaves no one out, gives each a 'lotted share 

Of the <>ld Year's wealth — on earth or in the air; 

And, now I think of it,' 1 '11 briefly state 

The Year's bequests. For th< ir division — wait. 



NEW-YEAS ADDRESSES. U'.t 



BEQUESTS. 

He left the world (that's clear, for he is gone,) 

For us to grow older and wiser on ; 

Sun, moon, and stars, (those old lamps of his youth 

By which he lived, and loved, and sinned, in sooth,) 

For us to live and love and sin by, too, 

(As we have done before, and still shall do;) 

Lands ready-sowed with wheat, awaiting Spring 

To touch his autumn seed with magic wing, 

And the rich fields of Promise, needing plow, 

But overflowed with milk and honey now; 

All sorts of buildings: princely tenements, 

Spacious enough for gouty discontents, 

Palaces, prisons (any style you please), 

Castles in Spain and Jersey cottages; 

Things heavenly, earthly; gifts of Fairy Hours, 

Blossoms of fruits and miracles of flowers; 

Horses and cattle on a thousand hills; 

Granaries, haystacks, vineyards, cotton-mills, 

Avers' Cherry Pectoral and Brandreth's Pills; — 

All these,,and sundry million things he mentions 

In soundest mind, with best of good intentions, 

He leaves to all, heirs and assigns, forever. 

— I think, by Jove, the Year was very clever ! 

The greatest gifts he gave, perchance, to one, 

He gave to all, with moon and star and sun: 

These were life, liberty, and the pursuit 

Of Happiness — that wild goose chase — to boot. 

CHARACTER OF THE TEAR. 

The Old Year was not a peaceful Year, for when 
First born, Mars took him all in arms ; again 



150 NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 

By his death couch, with a groat bloody light, 

The God <if War looked dreadful through the night. 

Yes, tlit' < >ld Year was a warrior: far and wide 

His battles yet may echo, glorified, — 

Their smoke arisen, changed to marvelous things, 

Phantoms of shadow, light the dark with wings ; 

His dreadful shapes of death transformed may rise 

With heavenly soul, in holy angel guise. 

In a true cause, we deem, his dearest hours 

Were crowned in death with bloody laurel flowers; — 

The cause of Right and Justice evermore 

He made Irs own, ami — hushed from shore to shore — 

The world awaited, breathless, for the end. 

Lo, Freedom knew him as her steadfast friend ! 

LAST ACTS, WOUDS, ETC. 

True to his life, at the near touch of D< ath, 

His warrior passion moved his ebbing breath. 

He ordered, faint, a general review: 

" With Abraham's leave, Til look his Generals through.' 

Willi starry Bhoulders glimmering they came, 

And each the Year, saluting, knew l>y name, 

"Some of them use the spy-glass well enough; 

Perhaps in peace they'd wear for warlike stuff," 

Said the < >ld Year; " they 've tried their best, no doubt,— 

I trust that Abraham knows his Man is out." 

The < 'Id Year paused, and something like a smile 

Wrinkled his snowy cheek a little while 

At his gray gayness. Then, in solemn wise, 

" I thought to wear some triumph in my eyes 

Asleep," he -aid — "Ah, Burnside, you are here? 

Lift up the flag and try Another Year ! " 



NEW-YEAR ADDRESSES. 151 



THE DEAD MARCH. 

Borne like a chieftain from his crimson bed, 
With a slow music wailing for the dead, 
lie shall not pass forgotten from the world — 
(Lo, the dead march, the starry banner furled!) 
But, blessed by men and women, he shall be 
Wrapped in the holy shroud of Poesy. 

NEW YEAlt's DAY. 

Good morrow, friends, abroad in health and life ; 

1 greet you warmly with old memories rife. 

Whither so eager, diverse-moving fast? — 

Into the open Future from the Past? 

I deem, perchance, ye go to learn the will : 

Be patient, for the seal is sacred still. 

Patience, to-day : tomorrow, when you deem 

Least of the affair, some winged power shall gleam 

Before you bright, alighting in your road ; — 

An Hour shall bring you what the Year bestowed. 

postscript. — K. B. 
Kind Patrons, without jesting, can you guess 
What the Year left your Carrier ? — His Address ' 



Ifcoto the ISfshop built his eollefle fn the 
Woofts. 




HOW TI1E BISHOP BUILT HIS COLLEGE IN THE 
WOODS. 




THE PIONEER lilSUOI'RIC AND FARM-HOUSE SEMINARY. 

ORTIIINGTON, on the Olentangy, 

nine miles north of Columbus, is one 
of the most venerable towns in Ohio. 
It was founded in 1803, on lands purchased 
of Hon. Thomas "Worthington, of Chillicothe 
— fifth governor of the State — by Colonel 
James Kilbourne, of Connecticut. TThen 
I last visited the place, seven years ago, a 
large two-storied brick building, noisy with 
a public school, was pointed out, across 
the public square, as that in which Bishop 
Philander Chase conducted an academy, after 

(155) 



156 BUILDING a COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

taking up his residence at Worthington in 
1817. This -was one of several houses built 
about the year 1808, and stands a little north 
of St. John's Church, doubtless one of the first 
church-buildings of any pretensions erected for 
the use of the Episcopal Church westward of 
the Allegheny mountains. 

Those who have read Bishop Chase's auto- 
biography will recall the story of his coming 
to Ohio, as related in that work. He came as 
a missionary, leaving his family to follow him, 
and made the journey from Hartford (where 
he gave up a pleasant home and assoeiations 
for the hardships and privations of a new 
country), during the winter of 181G-17. From 
Buffalo (then a small village) westward was 
almost an unbroken wilderness. On the south- 
ern shore of Lake Erie no line of public travel 
had yet been established, and the small lake 
sis were the only means of common con- 
veyance. But, when Mr. Chase reached Buf- 
falo by stage coach from Canandaigua, weeks 
would have yet to pass before the opening of 
navigation, and the prospect of delay was 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 157 

insupportable to one of his eager disposition. 
Private travel upon the ice of Lake Erie was 
still kept up, but as the season was far ad- 
vanced, this began to be looked upon as dan- 
gerous. While inquiring, however, as to the 
means of going forward, he happened to see 
"a man standing upright in his sled, with the 
horses' beads facing the lake." Here was the 
moment's opportunity, and he took it. He 
learned that the man was going twelve miles 
up the lake, and at once engaged to go with 
him that distance, trusting to Providence for 
further progress. As Mr. Chase seated him- 
self, with trunk and valise, in the farmer's 
sled, a gentleman named Ilibbard, with valise 
in hand, begged the same privilege. At the 
end of the twelve miles they were so fortunate 
as to find another man who promised to take 
them twenty-five miles further to Cattaraugus 
Creek, and this distance was passed over before 
night. Here, however, they found neither 
house nor shelter, but for an extra payment 
they prevailed upon the same person to carry 
them to a house known as Mack's Tavern, 



158 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS 

where tliey liireil a horse and cutter to take 
tlicm to the Four Corners, a place within 
twenty-five miles of the Pennsylvania line. 
Mr. Chase's description of this part of his 
journey is graphic and striking. He says in his 
autobiography : " It was sunrise ere we set off. 
In getting out on to the lake, we had to pass 
between several mounds of ice, and sometimes 
to climb over large cakes, which had been 
thrown up together by the force of the winds 
and waves. But the driver knew his way, and 
our horse was rough shod, and the cutter was 
strong and well built. The scene before us, 
as we came out from among the mounds of 
ice, was exceedingly brilliant, and even sub- 
lime. Before us, up the lake, was a level ex- 
panse of glassy ice, from two to three miles 
wide, between two ranges of ice-mountains, 
all stretching parallel with the lake shore and 
with one another, as far as the eye could ex- 
tend, till they were lost iii Hie distance. On 
this expanse and on these mountains, on the 
icicles, which hung in vast quantities and in 
an infinite variety of shapes from the rocky, 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 159 

lofty, and sharp-angled shore on the left, the 
rising sun was pouring his beams. Light and 
shade were so distinct, brilliancy and dark- 
ness were in such proximity, and yet so blended, 
as to produce an effect of admiration and 
praise to the great Creator never before ex- 
perienced. It would be in vain to express 
them here. What added to the adoring srrati- 
tude to God, for having made all things with 
such consummate skill and splendor, was what 
appeared as we rode along between these 
mountains of ice, manifesting God's providen- 
tial goodness, which went hand in hand with 
his power and wisdom. The bald-headed 
eagles sat on these mountains of ice, with each 
a fish in his claw, fresh and clean, as if just 
taken from the limpid lake. What noble 
birds ! How delicious their repast ! ' Whence 
do they obtain these fish at this inclement 
season?' said the writer. 'They get them,' 
said the driver, l from the top of the ice. 
These were thrown up and deposited by the 
winds and waves in the storms of last win- 
ter, and being immediately frozen, have been 



100 BUILDING A COLLEGE IS THE WOODS. 

kept till this spring, when the sun thaws them 
out for the eagles and ravens, which, at this 
season, have nothing else to feed on.' As the 
driver told this simple story of the fish, and 
the -tonus and the eagles, how elearly ap- 
peared the providential goodness of God. 
•And will not He who feedeth the eagles and 
the ravens, which He hath made to depend 
on His goodness, feed and support and bless a 
poor, defenseless, solitary missionary, who 
goeth forth, depending on His mercy, to preach 
His holy word, and to build up His Church in 
the wilderness?' There was an answer of 
faith to this question more consoling than if 
the wealth of the Indies had been laid at his 
feet." 

After some further experiences on the ice, 
the travelers reached Conneaut Creek (now 
Salem), Ohio, whence Mr. Chase made the rest 
of his journey alone, chiefly on horseback — 
preaching wherever he found scattered nicra- 
bers of his church on the way — reaching 
Worthington early in May, where he at once 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 161 

wrote to his wife, directing her to meet him 
at Cleveland in the middle of June. 

Mr. Chase was elected Bishop of Ohio in 
June of the following year (1818). He had 
meanwhile settled at Worthington, purchasing 
several lots fronting upon the public square, 
and a farm of one hundred and fifty acres, 
half a mile below, on the Columbus road — the 
old Sandusky pike — where he made his home. 
With the exception of about two years 
spent in Cincinnati as President of the Cin- 
cinnati College, and a year's absence in Eng- 
land, Bishop Chase continued to reside upon 
this farm until the year 1828, and his farm- 
house, for two years after the incorporation of 
that institution, was to all intents and pur- 
poses Kenyon College — it having been at first 
designed, according to the arrangement made 
with the beneficiaries in England, to establish 
the college upon the Bishop's Worthington 
farm. 

The life of an Ohio Bishop in those early 
days was not what would now be thought a 
desirable one. During the year 1820, Bishop 



1G2 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

Chase, in visiting the infant parishes of his 

diocese, traveled on horseback 1,271 miles. 
His services were meanwhile for the most part 
their own and only reward : his farm was al- 
most his sole support. In the fall of the 
above year, on returning home, he used 
his last dollar to pay a man hired to at- 
tend his farm, and as he had nothing to pay 
future wages, he was compelled to take the 
care of the place into his own hands — that 
is, as he states it, "thrash the grain, haul and 
cut the wood, build the tires and teed the 
stock; all this work he did besides the care 
of the churches. The whole was deemed a 
part of the Christian warfare, from which 
there was no discharge." In connection with 
this period an interesting circumstance is re- 
lated. One evening (and this was two years 
before the first thought of going to England 
occurred to him), having been at work all day 
on his farm, he wrote a letter to a friend in 
the East — Dr. Jarvis, of Boston — in answer to 
one of inquiry regarding the condition of the 
Church in Ohio. This letter (wherein, al- 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 163 

though with some hesitation, he made a plain 
statement of his discouragements) became a 
little marked with blood from a fresh cut in 
the Bishop's hand, for which he apologized by 
saying he had just come in from his work to 
write it. This friend afterward, in answer to in- 
quiries from one of the Scottish Bishops, named 
McFarlane, respecting the condition of the 
Church in America, forwarded with his own, 
to explain affairs in Ohio, Bishop Chase's let- 
ter just as it had come from the lattcr's hands. 
The daughter of this Scottish Bishop (Miss 
Duff McFarlane) was then in England, at the 
death-bed of a gentleman named John Bowd- 
ler, when she received a letter from her father, 
inclosing that written by Bishop Chase. She 
read the letter to the dying man, and was di- 
rected by him to take from his drawer a purse 
containing ten guineas, and by the first con- 
venient opportunity send it to the Ohio Bishop. 
When the latter was in England he was in- 
vited to breakfast at the house of one of Miss 
McFarlane's relatives one morning, after which 
he was astonished to see the lady produce his 



1G4 BUILDISG A COLLEGE J.V THE WOODS. 

blood-marked Wortliington letter, inquiring 
if lie were its author, and hand him the ten 
guineas which it had won from a dying man. 

Another of many interesting circumstances 
associated with Bishop Chase's residence at 
Wortliington, was his act in freeing a negro 
bought by him many years previous (in 1808), 
while living at New Orleans. This negro, 
Jack, was purchased for $500 as a house ser- 
vant, but, after five months' service, ran away 
and went, as was supposed, to England. 
Bishop Chase had long endeavored to forget 
to regret him, when, some years after settling 
at AVorthington, he received a letter from a 
friend at New Orleans, telling of the negro's 
return, arrest, identification, and imprisonment, 
and saving that he now awaited the arrival of 
the legal powers, to be sold for the benefit of 
his master. " This news," writes the Bishop, 
"put a new face on an old picture, every fea- 
ture of which the writer had been endeavoring 
to forget for eleven years. And now he had 
reasons, peculiar to his condition, for dismiss- 
ing it entirely from his mind; for although 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 165 

his once owning the slave Jack, like that of 
Philemon and other primitive Christians, was 
the result of providential necessity ; and al- 
though Jack, like Onesimus, might be consid- 
ered morally bound to return to his master, yet 
now, under present circumstances, if his mas- 
ter were to reclaim and sell him for money, 
his whole diocese would attribute it to a prin- 
ciple of covetousness, the great idol which, at 
the present day, all are so much inclined to 
worship, and thus his usefulness in Ohio would 
be destroyed forever. And though this ty- 
rant — the love of money — rules over the hearts 
of so many, yet all are very jealous of the af- 
fections of the clergy in this respect, and lain 
would starve their bodies to save their souls. 
The writer saw, or thought he saw, it would 
be so here; for though his diocese gave him 
nothing to live on, yet were he to reclaim his 
servant Jack, or even to sue for the money 
which the New Orleans Church owed him, 
and which they have since, in 1840, so honor- 
ably paid him ($1,500), all would have fallen 
on his character without mercy, and he would 



lt',0 BVILDISG A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

have labored among them in vain. Therefore, 
withafull determination to bury the whole mat- 
ter in oblivion, he wrote to his friends to eman- 
cipate his servant Jack, and let him go whither- 
soever lie pleased; that if he would pay his 
prison fees and other costs of suit, it would be 
all his master wanted." This emancipation 
act, was apparently the result, certainly, of 
a pretty strong chain of logic, and perhaps, 
privately, the good Bishop did not credit him- 
self with any special generosity in conse- 
quence. He adds, however, in making the 
record : "And why, the reader will ask, has 
this grave of oblivion been disturbed here? 
Why not sutler Jack to rest in his qnict bed? 
The answer is, because there was more in this 
than appears. Jack becomes hereafter, in this 
history of the writer's life, an important per- 
sonage, and proves, however insignificant in 
himself, to be one instrument among many of 
the means, in the hand of Providence, of res- 
cuing the writer from great distress in Lon- 
don, and. by consequence, of enabling him to 
found an institution, now the ornament of the 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 167 

West." This, of course, was Kenyon College. 
But I shall explain the negro's providential 
influence in another place. 

Returning from Worthington to Columbus, 
I passed the Bishop's old farm, about half a 
mile south of the town. The farm-house, a low 
two-storied frame, stands about a hundred and 
fifty yards back from the Columbus turnpike, 
directly east from the first toll-gate, with a 
fine old apple orchard between it and the pub- 
lic road. After the incorporation of Kenyon 
College, and its first beginning there, a few 
additional log buildings for temporary use 
were erected. These have long since passed 
away. 

It was at this old farm-house that the late 
Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, went through 
bis studies under the direction of his uncle, 
the Bishop, preparatory to entering Dart- 
mouth College ; and at about the same time a 
son of Henry Clay (who Avas instrumental to- 
ward Bishop Chase's success in enlisting sym- 
pathy for his purpose in England) was also a 
pupil in the farm-house seminary. 



168 BUILDING A COLLEGE IX THE WOODS. 



II. 

KENTON COLLEGE. 

Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton 
College "has not the universal sentiment of the 
" Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," but 
it expresses as no other poem, I believe, has 
ever yet expressed so well, the feeling one has 
in revisiting the scenes of school-boy experience, 
after long absence and the world have inter- 
vened — when he finds himself, a boy's ghost, 
in the midst of posterity. And when, ap- 
proaching Gambier, upon the Mount Vernon 
road (Gambier is five miles eastward from 
Mount Vernon), the dusky steeple of Kenyon 
College w T as seen far off" among the tree-tops, 
I found myself repeating almost unconsciously 
— deposing meanwhile the long departed 
" Elenry" (Henry the Sixth was the founder 
of Eton) in the fourth line, and substituting 
the possessive of Bishop Chase, — the first 
verses of that poem : 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IX THE WOODS. ]69 

" Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 
That crown the watery glade, 
Where grateful Science still adores 
Iler Chase's holy shade," — 

although, if a statement of the Rev. Dr. 
William Sparrow, one of the early Professors 
of Kenyon, is to he received, Science had not, 
perhaps, the most assured reason for gratitude 
in tliis case. Professor Sparrow wrote, that 
Bishop Chase, upon one occasion, when the 
propriety of getting philosophical and scien- 
tific apparatus was urged by a Kentucky gen- 
tleman who had two sons in the college, an- 
swered somewhat emphatically that Science 
was not the object of the institution. And 
certainly Science was not an original object in 
the foundation of Kenyon College ; it was Re- 
ligion — the college as a secular institution was 
an after-thought and secondary. Science, to be 
admitted, must administer to Religion. 

Five years after his consecration, Bishop 
Chase found himself in a diocese which was 
as yet a wide wilderness, with but five or six 
clergy in all; and, after an appeal to the East- 



170 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

era Church for Episcopal missionaries, failed to 
have his hands lifted up and strengthened. He 
was disheartened. The graduates of Eastern 
colleges and of the General Episcopal Theo- 
logical Seminary, at New York, did not indi- 
cate any disposition, while they could have 
good livings and pleasant churches near home, 
to venture into wild lands, and few young men 
could be sent from the struggling West to the 
East for education as ministers ; those few who 
went were also perhaps disposed to remain. 
There seemed little hope to the first Western 
Bishop, zealous for the Church, when one of 
his addresses to the Ohio Convention of six 
presbyters and deacons was noticed favorably 
in a prominent British Church organ. This 
circumstance, to which his attention was called 
by his son Philander (who had previously been 
a teacher in the Worthington seminary, but 
was recently ordained a minister, and was 
soon to die of a consumption with which he 
was then ill), at once suggested to him the 
feasibility of a Theological Seminary in Ohio, 
tor the education of a ministry to the manor 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 171 

born, and also a personal mission to England 
for the purpose of soliciting aid therefor. The 
thought took immediate shape in action ; — 
Bishop Chase made up his mind to start for 
England the coming autumn, it being now the 
middle of June. As preliminary, however, he 
addressed a circular letter to the American 
Bishops, advising them of his plan, and asking 
their sympathy and countenance in carrying it 
out. He also asked the prayers of the Church 
for his success. Before receiving answers to 
his circular, he started with his family from 
Cincinnati (where he was then residing as 
President of the Cincinnati College) in his pri- 
vate carriage — himself the coachman, for he 
could afford no other — and so journeyed eight 
hundred miles to Kingston, New York, where 
his family was to remain with relatives during 
his absence in Europe. 

Arriving at Kingston, he found a letter from 
Bishop llobart, of New York, emphatically 
discouraging his zealous purpose — arguing its 
. impropriety, proclaiming its object unneces- 
sary and uncalled for, asserting the prior claim 



172 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

of the General Seminary to help from abroad, 
if any were to be solicited, and indicating 
plainly his determination to oppose Bishop 
Chase's efforts (if he should persist in making 
them) in England, whither he was himself ex- 
pecting to start at nearly the same time. This 
was a sort of spiritual bombshell, with the 
fuse manifestly burning, to Bishop Chase's 
nearest friends and relatives, and they looked 
woeful. He was made of other stuff, however, 
and did not change bis mind. Two other let- 
ters — from Bishops Ravenscroft and Bowen — 
were received, approving his purpose and wish- 
ing him God-speed; other Bishops were silent, 
and these were presumed to be (as Bishop Ho- 
bart had informed him, indeed, that they were) 
against him. Bishop Chase's will was un- 
moved — he was determined to have bis way. 
"At length," he writes, " came the 1st of Oc- 
tober, the day fixed on while in Ohio for his 
embarkation. There was one clergyman in 
New York who ventured to accompany him to 
the ship, for whom in remembrance of this 
good deed he will never cease to pray. They 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 173 

walked together, while his wife and invalid 
son rode to White Hall in a coach, in which 
he embraced for the last time on earth his dar- 
ling son. . . . Soon the anchor was up 
and the ship at sea. All the passengers 
seemed happy, and the writer tried to feel so ; 
but the remembrance of what he had left be- 
hind—his sick son, his anxious wife, his help- 
less children, his suffering diocese, and his an- 
gry friends— forbade ; and, when he looked on 
the waters, he knew not who, if any, would 
welcome him with their greeting; but he was 
well assured who would attempt to drive him 
from the English shores, for from his own lips 
he heard the promise." This last expression 
doubtless refers to a personal interview with 
Bishop Hobart, whose name is only indicated 

by a in Bishop Chase's autobiography. 

He had previously requested the prayers of the 
church for a person going to sea, he tells us, 
adding: "In this he was denied — on what 
principle he never asked." 

Bishop Chase landed in England early in No- 
vember, 1823, and at once found the air full of 



174 BUILDING A COLLEGE IX THE WOODS. 

ill-omens. Every- where he saw indications of 
what is called the cold shoulder. A paper im- 
pugning his case, motives, and character, had 
been printed and circulated, and there was a 
wide-spread prejudice against him. He had, 
however, gained a few friends himself, and by 
means of a letter of introduction written to 
Lord Gambier, of the Admiralty, by Henry 
Clay (who had met Lord Gambier during the 
negotiations at Ghent), he was admitted to the 
acquaintance of that nobjeman, by whom his 
cause was earnestly espoused, although he, too, 
had read and was at first prejudiced by the hos- 
tile publication. Gradually the opposition be- 
gan to give way ; other friends were won, and 
finally a stroke of Providence, as the Bishop 
chose to look upon it, created a strong current 
of feeling in his favor. 

I have mentioned, as an episode in Bishop 
Chase's Life at Worthington, the freeing of his 
New Orleans negro servant, Jack, who, after an 
interval of eleven years, had been arrested and 
held subject to his master's orders. In 1824, 
the British Parliament was much divided on 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 1 75 

the proposed abolition of slavery in the West 
Indies, and whoever showed a favorable dispo- 
sition toward the enslaved race was sure of a 
large adherence of friends. At this time a 
benevolent gentleman named Joseph Butter- 
worth, a friend in sympathy and acting with 
Wilberforce, was also a member of Parliament. 
Through intimate acquaintance with the police, 
according to Bishop Chase, he knew that the 
Bishop had been in London ever since he took 
up his residence in a certain quarter, except 
during a visit to the north of England. " He 
knew," Bishop Chase writes, " that he was 
there unnoticed and unknown, from November 
till after his return in the spring from the north, 
and he had thought little of him because others 
did so. 'And how,' the reader will ask, ' came 
Mr. Butterworth to think otherwise of the neg- 
lected being living in No. 10 Furtherstone 
Buildings, High Holborn ?' Simply because 
Dr. Robert Dow, of New Orleans, came to 
town. 'And how could this gentleman in- 
fluence so sound a judgment as that of Mr. 
Joseph Butterworth ?' " Dr. Dow, the New 



176 BUILDING A COLLEGE IX THE WOODS. 

Orleans friend, who had written to Bishop 
Chase regarding his negro servant, and through 
whom the latter was emancipated, had started 
to make his home in his native land, Scotland. 
Wishing to invest some funds, while stopping 
in London on his way, he had consulted Joseph 
Butterworth, and in the conversation which 
followed Mr.B.had inquired, since Dr. Dow had 
come from America, whether he knew Bishop 
Chase. Yes, Bishop Chase had once been his 
pastor at Xew Orleans. Then as to his real char- 
acter? "Always good," was the answer; — why 
was it questioned? lie then learned of 
Bishop Chase's presence in England, and of the 
peculiar neglect shown him. Dr. Dow ex- 
pressed surprise. Mr. Butterworth observed 
that there must be something singular in this 
gentleman, or he would not have remained 
voluntarily in the position wherein he was re- 
garded by the public — Bishop Chase, in order 
to keep the peace of the Church, having sto- 
ically refrained from answering the charges 
printed and circulated to his prejudice. Dr. 
Dow replied that lie never knew any thing 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 177 

singular in Bishop Chase except in the case oi 
his emancipating a yellow slave, adding that he 
hardly presumed that would hurt him in Eng- 
land, although in New Orleans it had been con- 
sidered foolish as well as singular. The Doctor 
then related to Mr. B. the story of the escaped 
house-servant, and of his emancipation by 
Bishop Chase. This gained the Bishop a sudden 
tide of friendship and .favor, which was unac- 
countable until sometime after, when a let- 
ter from his old New Orleans physician shed 
light upon it. In this way, according to the 
Bishop's interpretation of events, the negro, 
Jack, became a founder — or a powerful instru- 
ment and lever in the foundation — of Ivenyon 
College. Mr. Butterworth had sought Bishop 
Chase, invited him to his house, introduced 
him to influential friends, and the Ohio Church 
stock was at once popular. Miss McFarlane, the 
Scotch Bishop's daughter, who showed Bishop 
Chase his own letter written to Br. Jarvis from 
"Worthington, with the mark of his bloody 
sweat upon it, also became a valuable friend, 
securing the favor of Lady Rosse, whose sub- 



178 BVILDIXO A COLLEGE IS THE WOODS. 

Bcription built Rosse Chapel, named after her, 
at Gambier. 

Thesuccessof Bishop Chase's foreign mission 
was now assured. lie returned to America in 
the early autumn of 1824, with a subscription of 
about five thousand guineas — a sum much larger 
in effect then than now. Amongthe names upon 
the li^t, which included several hundred of 
the clergy and laity, were some of the most 
eminent ones in Church and State of the King- 
dom — such as the Lord Bishops of London, 
Durham, St. David's, and Chester; the Deans 
of Canterbury and Salisbury; Lords Kenyon, 
Gambier, Bexley, and Barhani; the dowager 
Countess of Rossc, and Miss Hannah More. 
The subscriptions ranged from one pound 
upward to over four hundred pounds sterling, 
and the transmission of the funds awaited only 
the action of Henry Clay, who was named as 
an umpire in the selection of a location for the 
contemplated institution. 

It had been originally intended to establish 
the Theological Seminary and College upon 
Bishop Chase's Worthington farm, he having 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. ]79 

agreed to give it for that purpose; but it was 
provided that if another more desirable loca- 
tion should be gratuitously offered, then Bishop 
Chase's land should revert to him. The Theo- 
logical Seminary of Ohio was begun, however, 
upon the farm near "Worthington, under an 
act of incorporation passed by the Ohio Legis- 
lature, in 1825 ; and in January, 182G, a sup- 
plementary act created the faculty of a college, 
under the designation of " The President and 
Faculty of Kenyon College." Mrs. Betsy 
Reed, of Putnam, Ohio, meanwhile offered to 
give a thousand acres of laud situated on 
Alum Creek, several miles northeast of 
Worthington, as a seat for the College, and for 
a time this seemed preferable in the eyes of 
the Bishop to the "Worthington land. But 
there was a contest of opinion, among those 
now become interested, as to the most desira- 
ble location; Charles Hammond, Rufus King, 
John Bailhache, Colonel John Johnston, and 
others — who, I believe, were among the origi- 
nal Trustees — desiring to place the College 
near or in one of the larger cities. Cincinnati, 



180 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

Chillicothc, and one or two other places were 
suggested. Bishop Chase opposed bis will 
to these, holding it of vital importance that 
the institution so dear to his soul, and for 
which he had already sacrificed so much in 
time, patience, and energy, should he beyond 
the immediate influence of cities, on wide 
lands of its own, through which it could have 
a power by right of the soil, and exercise a 
strong local influence and government. Col. 
Johnston criticized this theory, saying that to 
build up a literary institution from the stump 
in the woods was a chimerical project; — it 
would surely fail and become an object of ridi- 
cule. Presently, after the Bishop had begun 
to make some clearings on Mrs. Reed's Alum 
Creek lands, his attention was directed bv 
Daniel S. Korton and Henry B. Curtis, of 
Mount Vernon, to a large tract of wild land in 
Knox county, owned by William Hogg, of 
Brownsville, Pennsylvania, and this proved so 
desirable in his eyes that he at once made a 
contract to purchase it, subject to the approval 
of the Trustees and of Henry Clay. This 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 181 

purchase, after considerable debate, was finally 
approved; when Mr. Hogg consented to make 
one-fourth of the price of the land (eight thous- 
and acres at three dollars per acre) a free gift, 
and, for eighteen thousand dollars, conveyed 
the title to the Trustees of the Theological 
Seminary of the Diocese of Ohio. 

This land, occupied by Ivenyon College for 
over half a century, was a wilderness, but a 
beautiful one, and as healthy and happy a lo- 
cation for a college as could be found in the 
Ohio Valley. 

In June, 1826, Bishop Chase started with his 
little army of occupation for the chosen spot, 
which he named Gambier Hill, after his first 
powerful and steadfast English friend. " His 
hired man and his little son, Dudley, were the 
only persons who accompanied him from 
Worthington to the promised land on this 
lonely journey," the heroic Bishop writes, add- 
ing: "And must it be called lonely? Nay, he 
felt it otherwise. He experienced a conscious- 
ness of Divine aid in commencing this great 
work, which convinced him he was not alone. 



132 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE HOODS. 

God Mas with him, and, though like Jacob, 
ho should have nothing but the ground to rest 
on, and a stone for a pillow, he trusted that 
God's presence would be his "support." Gam- 
bier Hill, upon which Bishop Chase fixed the 
location of the college buildings, is a level ridge 
running north and south, elevated about one 
hundred and fifty feet above the Kokosing, 
which flows from a pretty valley on the east- 
ern side around its southern base, and, after 
making a sort of gigantic ox-bow in the wide 
lowlands to the southeast, disappears far away 
to the northeast. From its top a variety of as 
charming landscape is visible as perhaps any 
outlook in the State affords. The valley of 
the Ivokosing eastward is the picture of " a 
smiling land ; " westward are the suggestions 
of an unconquered wilderness. Oaks predom- 
inate in the surrounding forest; — how gor- 
geous I remember them in far-back autumnal 
seasons ! Here is the picture, drawn by Bishop 
Chase, of < tambier Hill, at his first occupation: 
"The whole surface of the hill was then a 
windfall, bring a great part or it covered with 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 183 

fallen and upturned trees, between and over 
which had come up a second growth of thick 
trees and bushes. It was on such a place as 
this (proverbially impervious even to the 
hunters after wolves, which made it their co- 
vert) that the writer pitched his tent, if such 
it might be called. On the south end or 
promontory of this hill (near to which, below, 
ran the road used by the first settlers), grew 
some tall oak trees, which evidently had es- 
caped the hurricane in days of yore. Under 
the shelter of these some boards in a light 
wagon were taken nearly to the top of the 
bill ; there they were dropped, and it was with 
these the writer's house was built, after the 
brush was with great difficulty cleared away. 
Two crotched sticks were driven into the 
ground, and on them a transverse pole was 
placed, and on the pole was placed the brush, 
inclining to the ground each way. The ends 
or gable to this room, or roof shelter, were 
but slightly closed by some clapboards rived 
on the spot from a fallen oak tree. The beds 
to sleep on were thrown on bundles of straw, 



184 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

kept up from the damp ground by a kind of 
temporary platform, resting on stakes driven 
deeply into the earth. This was the first habi- 
tation on Gambier Hill, and it stood nearly on 
the site where now rises the noble edifice of 
Kenyon College." 

Such an "opening" as this would not sur- 
prise us if made by an adventurous pioneer, 
with the object of building a rude home in 
the backwoods, but it appears in a different 
light when looked upon as the work of a 
learned Episcopal Bishop, — who, a year be- 
fore, had been entertained by Lords and La- 
dies of the English aristocracy, and treated 
with respect and reverence by high dignitaries 
of the Church of England, — preparatory to 
founding an institution which he fondly hoped 
would in time be a great center of light and 
culture. What a task-work had this one man 
set before himself, and how strenuously he 
wrought to accomplish his purpose! "It is 
said," Bishop Chase writes in allusion to this 
seemingly "forlorn advance": "It is said, by 
those not intimately acquainted with the facts 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IX THE WOODS. 185 

and the nature of things, that the writer might 
have avoided the difficulties and exposures 
here described by residing in the nearest vil- 
lage, or even by taking shelter, for a time, in 
the little log cabins already erected on the prem- 
ises, from one to two miles off. Alas ! if such 
had been his course, no beginning would have 
been made to the great work. He wanted 
money to pay a resolute person to go forward 
in a work like this, if such could he found; 
he wanted money to pay for his own board in 
a village four miles off; he wanted money to 
hire even his common hands and teams, — 
those he used here being the hands and wagons 
usually employed on his own farm at Worth- 
ington. Now, if ever there was a necessit}- 
for saying come, and not go, to work, that 
necessity existed here, the donations hitherto 
collected being all pledged for the lands. The 
word was said, and, under Providence, to this 
he owes his final success." 

The first thing done was to dig a well; and 
this reminds me that Bishop Chase began his 
great undertaking with a temperance reform. 



186 BVILDIXG A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

He stipulated that no liquor should be used by 
the men employed in his building. lie feared 
it might compromise in some way the future 
College. This caused him some trouble. There 
was, soon after the beginning, what may be 
called an incipient whisky rebellion among 
his hired hands. They at length sent him a 
petition asking for a glass three times a day, 
saying, at the close: " We think the expense 
will be repaid to the institution tenfold." The 
Bishop appointed a meeting with them, took 
his seat, embarrassed, upon apiece of elevated 
timber, told them quietly the story of his life 
and struggles, moved many of them to tears, 
and all went to work on the original temper- 
ance platform ! 

In a letter to bis wife, written soon after his 
arrival on the ground, he says : " If you ask how 
J gel along without money, I answer, the Lord 
keepeth me. "What do you think of His 
mercy in sending good Mr. Davis with half a 
cheese from his mother, and twenty-five dol- 
lars from his father, presented to me out of 
pure regard to the great and good work which 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 187 

God enables me to cany on ? Mr. Norton 
has sent me three hands for a short time. 
James Meleck came one day, and old Mr. 
Elliott another. We have built us a tent 
cabin, and if we had any one to cook for us 
we should live. It is impossible to make the 
hands board themselves. We must find them 
provisions ourselves, or have none to help us. 
If we can get the poor neighbors to cook a 
little for us we do well. Judy Holmes has 
been here for three days, and is now-engaged 
in surveying the north section. The streets 
and roads in this, the south section, have been 
laid out, as far as can be, till we find water. 
If this can not be obtained here we shall move 
to some other quarter. Tray send me, by Re- 
becca, two more beds and bedding similar to 
those I brought with me. I write you this by 
a poor, dim hog's-lard lamp, which, shining 
askance on my paper, will hardly permit me 
to say how faithfully I am your affectionate 
husband." 

Bishop Chase spent the following fall and 
winter in the Eastern States, soliciting further 



188 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

assistance toward the completion of the work 
begun by him, issuing there a "Plea on be- 
half of Religion and Learning in Ohio," from 
which season of effort about $18,000 were real- 
ized. In June, 1827, the corner-stone of Ken- 
yon College was laid, and the neighborhood 
grow busy with the various workmen. In 
August of that j'ear the Bishop wrote "to his 
wife as follows: "The great work progresses 
slowly but surely. The basement story is 
now completed. The tall scaffold-poles now 
rear their heads all around the building. The 
joist timbers are now taking their places, and 
the frames of the partition walls below are 
putting together. The masons are pressing 
the carpenters, the carpenters the teamsters, 
and the teamsters the hewers. The whip- 
sawyers are not able to keep up with the 
demand in their line. The blacksmiths, two 
in number, are driven very hard to keep sharp 
the hammers and picks, repair the chains, 
mend wagons and make new irons for them, 
and shoes for twenty-eight cattle in the teams. 
Our log house, additional to that you saw, 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 189 

will receive its roof to-morrow, and, in the 
beginning of the week, I trust, will be occu- 
pied as a dining-room. The stone gothic 
building, for a Professor's house, must soon be 
plastered. I go to Mount Vernon to-morrow 
for a thousand things, and will put this in the 
post-office for you. We have now nearly sixty 
hands, all busy and faithfully at work ; an ac- 
count of each is taken every night." During 
all this week-day labor, the Bishop tells us, he 
was never unmindful of his sacred calling as a 
clergyman, officiating at Gambier, at Mount 
Vernon, or elsewhere in the neighborhood. 
Visiting Worthington in October, and finding 
his wife ill with typhoid fever, he feels the 
necessity of leaving her (her convalescence, 
however, had begun), asking her, the next 
evening afterward, in a letter: "Was this, 
my desertion of you, from my own incli- 
nation? No! Nothing but the great duty 
of overseeing what God hath so miraculously 
put into my hands could have persuaded me 
to do this. Even as it is, I feel a pang which 
I can not describe to you. My eyes fill with 



]90 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

tears when I think how I left you in sickness. 
But God's will he done ! My exile here is the 
result of this submission." 

Soon after he sees the good policy of build- 
ing a saw-mill — whip-sawyers were not suf- 
ficient, and the only saw-miller in the vicin- 
ity demanded exorbitant prices for lumber. 
The workmen approve, and the work is begun 
at once, all hands assisting. A dam is nearly 
completed, a long mill-race across a neck of 
low land (where a bend of the stream has formed 
the ox-bow already mentioned) is commenced. 
The news of this extravagant undertaking 
travels through the diocese, and the Bishop's 
plans are pronounced rash and visionary. The 
digging of the race is begun — the tail-race, 
indeed, is almost finished; but the earth- 
scrapers progress slowly. Meanwhile the first 
story above the basement of the main college 
building is erected, on one side, as far as the 
windows. But how about the mill-race? The 
equinoctial storm is due and dreaded. It ar- 
rives. The rains fell and the floods came. 
The Kokosing rose to an unusual height, and, 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 191 

somewhat aggravated by the dam, overflowed 
the lowlands. As !N"oah from the Ark, the 
anxious Bishop looked down from Gambier 
Hill. lie felt that all was lost. The dam 
could not be seen. The sky, however, cleared ; 
the waters subsided : the dam was still there, 
and the head-race was there — a channel 
of running water already — a special gift of 
Providence, that saved a large expense of 
money and labor. " This mark of Providen- 
dential goodness," writes the Bishop, " was of 
signal service in building Kenyon College." 

This miracle of the mill-race won over to 
the Bishop's side., it seems, the skeptical driver 
of the local stage-coach, who was hitherto of 
the opposition, sneering and jesting at the 
mad college-builder. One clay, shortly after- 
ward, it is related, his carriage being full and 
the driver being seated, by its construction, in 
juxtaposition with the passengers, a conversa- 
tion was begun, in which the plan of Kenyon 
College was condemned and ridiculed, and its 
failure predicted. This was affirmed as the 
opinion of all in the coach, and then asserted 



192 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

to be that of all people throughout the coun- 
try. " The Bishop has no friends," they said; 
'•his plan is hopeless." "You are a little too 
fast," said the driver; "a little too fast, gen- 
tlemen, in what you say. Bishop Chase has 
one friend." "And who is he?" was the 
common question. "It is one," the driver 
said, " whom if you knew you would not 
despise; and knowing his favor to the Bishop, 
you would no longer speak thus." " And who 
is he? Who can this friend be?" was the re- 
iterated question. "Gentlemen," said the 
driver, solemnly, " God is Bishop Chase's 
friend, and my proof is the fact that ho caused 
the late equinoctial rain-storm to dig his mill- 
race for him, thus saving him the expense of 
many hundred dollars/' 

It is hardly worth while to continue in de- 
tail this story of a heroic persistence: what- 
ever the results of the college itself have been 
or may lie, Kenyon College was built ; the cen- 
tral building was completed With the Bishop's 
own supervision; Rosse Chapel (endowed by 
Lady Rosse, and named after her), was begun ; 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. ]93 

the College, having been removed from "Worth- 
ington (where it had been carried on meanwhile 
upon the Bishop's farm), in 1828, was recog- 
nized as a living fact — and Bishop Chase was 
the one man, under God, who, against many 
and great obstacles, had made it such. His 
struggle in its behalf was a fight with the 
Dragon, and he, a true Knight of the Red 
Cross, came off conqueror. 

But, if I am rightly informed, Bishop Chase 
was better fitted to build than to govern. Ko 
man could have done the task- work he had 
accomplished without something more than 
selfish devotion. There may have been a 
ground-work of personal ambition under- 
neath his purpose, but it must still have been 
a noble one, and breathed the true air of re- 
ligion. Soon after the removal of the Col- 
lege to Gambier, divisions began to show 
themselves between the Bishop, who was ex- 
officio President of the Institution, and the 
Faculty. Bitter feelings grew up between 
him and some of the Professors. Perhaps the 
Bishop, who did not always think it necessary 



194 BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

to attend the Faculty meetings, was too free 
to ignore its judgments and decisions, and 

make college law a matter of Lis own per- 
sonal discretion. IT is disposition was not, 
other things considered, an unfortunate one 
in planning and building the material struc- 
ture, but seemed doubtfully fitted to conduct 
the moral and spiritual institution. I have 
read some of the various documents printed 
regarding this matter, and am inclined to 
think Bishop Chase was in error. He was 
arbitrary, impetuous, fierce, and unjust, at 
times. The disagreements at length led to 
his resignation, in 1820, at a time when his 
services in the material affairs of the College 
(whose buildings were still in progress) were 
thought indispensable. Consequently his re- 
signation was not accepted by the Diocesan 
Convention. Another year having passed, and 
the state of ill-feeling and jealousy yet exist- 
ing, Bishop Chase again presented his resig- 
nation to the Convention held that year at 
Gambler. This time the resignation was ac- 
cepted, — perhaps contrary to the expectation 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IA THE WOODS. 195 

of the Bishop ; for it is reported that, on the 
day following, lie shook the dust of Kenyon 
from his feet, mounted his horse, rode hastily 
away, and betook himself to the place of a rela- 
tive in Holmes county, called by him "the 
Valley of Feace," leaving his family to pack 
up and follow him at their leisure. He never 
returned. After having settled for a while 
in Michigan, he went to Illinois, where, at a 
place called by him " The Robin's Nest," he 
founded a new institution known as Jubilee 
College. A gentleman described " The Rob- 
in's Nest" to me as a row of three or four 
little log houses, terminated by a still smaller 
frame building. This was the characteristic 
beginning of Jubilee College, of which other- 
wise I know nothing. Indeed, Bishop Ch:i-c'~ 
career does not interest me particularly, ex- 
cept as the founder of Kenyon College, which, 
I trust, shall yet prove more greatly deserv- 
ing of his faith and works. He had earned 
the gratitude of his Church in Ohio by his 
efforts in its behalf; and, perhaps, there was 
hardly so much tenderness shown to his tern- 



196 BUILDING A COLLEGE IS THE WOODS. 

perament as ho had earned by his long-suffer- 
ing heroic endurance and persistent energy. 
Yet, though in effect banished from the place 
for which lie wrought and fought so long, 
Kenyon College is, to-day, with every stone in 
its every building, his monument and witness. 
A portrait of him, said to he life-like, painted 
on the commission of some foreign admirer 
and friend, while he was in England in 1824, 
was sent to this country several years ago, and 
presented to the college. I saw it in the li- 
brary. It shows some strong points of resem- 
blance to the late Chief Justice, I think, in 
his younger days. And I may here remark, 
by the way, that the remains of the Acland 
printing-press, purchased for the» use of the 
Ohio Episcopal College, with a separate sub- 
Bcription raised among the ladies of the Eng- 
lish nobility by Lady Acland, wife of Sir 
Thomas Acland, during the Bishop's mission 
to England, were pointed out to me in the 
back door-yard of a little private printing- 
office carried on in Gambler. 

I shall not go into a careful further history 



BUILDING A COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. JOJ 

of the College. Bishop Chase's record, in 
connection with it, seems to me unusually in- 
teresting, and I have merely tried to sketch 
it with the help of his own autobiography, 
added to whatever personal knowledge I pos- 
sessed or could obtain. I may say, however, 
that the College has had a struggle for life 
since the old Bishop's exit; and its progress 
has depended on often-repeated ' ; beggings." 
(This word was given to me, as the right one, 
by an accomplished gentleman of Gambier.*) 
Bishop Mcllvaine also took up one or two 
subscriptions in England — the first as long 
ago as 1835 — and several in the United 
States. 

The buildings of Kenyon College are as no- 
ble as those of any institution of learning in 
America. The college building proper is a 
large and handsome one, of dark gray sand- 
stone, one hundred and ninety feet long and 

*Rev. Alfred Blake, since deceased, a schoolmate 
and classmate of Chief Justice Chase — born, like him, 
at Keene, N. H — who, for many years, kept an excel- 
lent classical school for boys at Gambier. 



198 BUILDING .1 COLLEGE IN THE WOODS. 

four stories high, including the basement, 
with turrets, pinnacles, and a Lei fry, topped 
with a spire one hundred and seventeen feet 
high, in the center. This edifice stands upon 
Bouthern end of Gambier Hill, fronts 
northward, and overlooks the valley of the 
Kokosing for many miles. Half a mile to the 
north of the college building is Bexley Hall 
(named after Lord Bexley), erected for the 
use of the Theological Seminary exclusively. 
It is an elegant and tasteful structure. Half 
way hit ween these two buildings, on either 
side of the main street or avenue, is the town 
or village of Gambier; a little to the east of 
which, but hidden by trees, is Milnor Hall, 
designed for the grammar-school, and named 
after Lady Milnor. An extensive park in- 
closes most of the college buildings. Upou 
the western side of the path through the park 
is Rosse Chapel — built with the endowment of, 
and named after, Lady Rosse — a large, low 
building in sandstone, of Ionic architecture. 
Nearly opposite, on the eastern side, is 
Ascension Hall, a fine, large, four-storied 



L'UILDISQ A COLLEGE IX THE WOODS. 199 

edifice, of light- colored freestone. This con- 
tains the recitation rooms, society apartments, 
College library, etc. Near the northern en- 
trance of the park, and on the eastern side, is 
the Church of the Holy Spirit, completed in 
1871, a gift of the members of Ascension Par- 
ish, New York City, and of their former rec- 
tor, Bishop Bedell. This is built of free- 
stone, and is one of the most beautiful ecclesi- 
astical structures in the West. 

Although it can not bo said of Kenyon's 
graduates, as the poet Gray sang of the alumni 
of Cambridge, in the "realms of empyrean 
day": 

" There sit the sainted Sage, the Bard divine, 
The few whom Genius gave to shine, 
Through every unborn age and undiscovered clime. 
Rapt in celestial transport they, 
Yet hither oft a glance from high 
They send of tender sympathy, 
To bless the place, where on their opening soul, 
First the genuine ardor stole; " 

for Kenyon has yet sent forth neither a Mil- 
ton nor a Newton ; nevertheless, among its 
students or graduates have been Chief Justice 



200 BUJLDIXO A COLLEGE IN THE H 

Chase, whose preparation for Dartmouth Col- 
lege was made in his uncle the Bishop's farm- 
house, at Worthington (as already mentioned) ; 
Edwin M. Stanton, the late Secretary of War; 
David Davis, late Associate Justice of the 
United States Supreme Court; Henry Winter 
Davis, so prominent as a Maryland Congress- 
man, orator and patriot, during the War of 
the Rebellion ; Hon. Stanley Matthews ; 1 ' 
dent Rutherford B. Hayes ; with a long list 
of clergymen, lawyers, and others, scattered 
throughout the country, and having local dis- 
tinction and influence. 



^Y^P^^ 



